Lorne Laboratories has installed a Flexicon FF30 semi-automatic tabletop filling and capping machine from Watson-Marlow to meet demand for its range of blood grouping reagents.
The machine is said to have doubled throughout and halved the operation's labour requirement, helping the company fulfil orders from blood transfusion, immunology and sero-diagnosis professionals.
'Until recently we were using manual methods to fill 10ml vials with blood reagents, in other words, hand-filling them and then screwing on caps, at a rate of 2,000-3,000 vials a day,' said Andy Gould, production manager at Lorne Laboratories.
But with order quantities increasing, this was not enough to satisfy demand and Gould knew that introducing a degree of automation into the process was the way to proceed.
Based on peristaltic pumping principles, the Flexicon FF30 from Watson-Marlow is a semi-automatic, modular machine that offers handling, aseptic filling and cap tightening for volumes up to 1,200 units an hour, depending on the application.
Gould said: 'We have had the Flexicon machine since September 2009 and it has already doubled our throughput to 5,000-7,000 vials a day.
'It has eased a genuine bottleneck and we have not had a single problem with the machine since it was installed.
'In addition, we now only need one operator for the machine, whereas filling and capping was previously a two-person job,' he added.
Improved hygiene is another benefit that is particularly important in the medical industry.
In peristaltic pumping operations, nothing but the hose or tube touches the fluid, eliminating the risk of the pump contaminating the fluid, or the fluid contaminating the pump.
The Flexicon FF30 is also easy to clean - all format parts are mounted by finger screws, while all surfaces in contact with the vials are made of stainless steel.
Other advantages include filling accuracy of +/- 0.5 per cent, as well as system flexibility, which is vital as many of the blood reagents vary in viscosity.
The acquisition of the FF30 means that Lorne Laboratories can produce diagnostic test kits and reagents in vials, or in bulk if required, to customers found in transfusion services, hospitals or the armed forces, or to scientists or clinicians working in laboratories all over the world.
