Roxane Laboratories, Inc., a global Pioneer in the development, Manufacture and marketing of pharmaceutical products and a subsidiary of Ridgefield, CT-based Boehringer Ingelheim Corp., was experiencing challenges with its moisture-prevention platform for a selection of its own bottled products. Inconsistent desiccant packet lengths and punched-hole irregularities between desiccant packets caused appreciable havoc on its pharmaceutical packaging line. Roxane turned to Multisport Technologies, Inc. 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 improved packaging efficiency by 20 percent.
Roxane began in 1885 as Columbus Pharmocol, a small, regional pharmaceutical manufacturer based in Columbus, OH. More than a hundred years later, the company now employs approximately 910 people and generates over 350 pharmaceutical products. The Trick to Roxane’s success is its ability to manufacture Unique, high quality products to fulfil clients’ needs in special markets. To support this strategy, the company creates unit-dose tablets, capsules and oral solutions for hospital PHARMACEUTICAL DESICCANT and home-care use. An automatic dispensing unit is utilised to deliver the sorbent packets to bottled pharmaceuticals. As a packaging engineer in Roxane, Julie Rink constantly keeps current on the top moisture-protection systems to be certain that Roxane retains its reputation of providing quality pharmaceutical products. Protection against moisture is very important for pharmaceutical stability, particularly for sensitive drugs. Of the supplier’s 350 distinct formulations, 45 require desiccant technology.
Certain medications are more likely to moisture-induced degradation, says Rink. Without proper desiccation, pharmaceutical products can stick together, react with ambient moisture from the package or encounter undesirable microbial activity –all of which result in a reduced shelf life. Roxane was already using a silica-gel-based desiccant package in Its packaging line, but inconsistent packet lengths and variations from the punched holes between packets used for cutting edge registration caused difficulty when running the sticks on automatic shredding machinery. Since the company’s present APA-2000 dispensing technology operates in fail-safe manner, it rejects out-of-length packs, preventing cutting them off the line. However, frequent operator intervention to remove improperly manufactured packets from the dispenser resulted in significant downtime.