Roxane Laboratories, Inc., a worldwide leader in the development, Manufacture and marketing of innovative pharmaceutical products and a subsidiary of Ridgefield, CT-based Boehringer Ingelheim Corp., was experiencing challenges with its moisture-prevention platform for a range of its own bottled products. Inconsistent desiccant packet lengths and punched-hole irregularities between desiccant packets caused considerable downtime on its pharmaceutical packaging line. Roxane turned to Multisport Technologies, Inc. www.multisorb.com and its Strip Pax sorbent packets for a solution. Employed with Multicore’s APA-2000 dispensing equipment, manufactured by Active-Pak Automation APA, a branch of Multisport, the new packets have almost completely eliminated downtime and have enhanced packaging efficiency by 20 percent.
Roxane started in 1885 as Columbus Pharmocol, a small, regional pharmaceutical manufacturer based in Columbus, OH. Over a hundred years later, the company now employs approximately 910 individuals and produces over 350 pharmaceutical products. The Trick to Roxane’s success is its ability to manufacture Unique, high quality products to meet customers’ requirements in special markets. To support this strategy, the company produces unit-dose pills, capsules and oral solutions for hospital pharmaceutical desiccant and home-care use. An automatic dispensing unit is Used to bring the sorbent packets to bottled pharmaceuticals. As a packaging engineer in Roxane, Julie Rink always keeps Up to date on the very best moisture-protection systems to make sure that Roxane keeps its reputation of providing quality pharmaceutical products. Protection against moisture is vital for pharmaceutical stability, especially for sensitive drugs. Of the provider’s 350 distinct formulations, 45 require desiccant technology.
Certain medications are prone to moisture-induced degradation, says Rink. Without appropriate desiccation, pharmaceutical products can stick together, react with ambient moisture in the package or experience undesirable microbial action –all of which lead to a reduced shelf life. Roxane was already using a silica-gel-based desiccant packet in Its packaging line, but inconsistent packet lengths and variations in the punched holes between packets used for cutting edge registration caused difficulty when conducting the packets on automatic shredding machinery. As the business’s present APA-2000 dispensing technology functions in fail-safe mode, it rejects out-of-length packets, preventing cutting them contaminating the line. However, frequent operator intervention to eliminate improperly manufactured packets from the dispenser resulted in significant downtime.