Major new facility built to produce high-quality tubing for peristaltic pumps for use in pharmaceutical, biopharm, and food applications
Watson-Marlow Bredel Pumps, the manufacturer of peristaltic pumps, has built a new, £750,000, 650m2 facility at its Falmouth headquarters to produce high quality platinum-cured silicone tubing.
Having a unique understanding of peristaltic pump users and the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and food industries means that Watson-Marlow Bredel's new tubing provides greater advantages at competitive market prices.
For Watson-Marlow Bredel this means tighter quality control, a shorter supply-chain, and greater scope for development.
In short, the new facility gives the company the ability to respond much more quickly and directly to changing customer needs.
For the customer this means superior platinum-cured tubing now at the same price as the previously supplied peroxide-cured tubing, higher quality (tighter tolerance) tubing for optimum pumping efficiency, custom tubing for specific applications, and a quicker response to changing customer requirements Silicone tubing is the most commonly used type of tubing in pharmaceutical, biopharm and food applications, where Watson-Marlow Bredel has always been particularly strong. The company is now making even greater inroads into pharmaceutical, biopharm and food with its Sci-Q peristaltic pumps.
Rather than relying on time consuming and often difficult to validate cleaning procedures, it is often more cost effective to treat tubing as a disposable item.
This, and the fact that the media being pumped in pharmaceutical and biopharm applications is increasing in value, adds even further to the demand for silicone tubing.
The decision to concentrate exclusively on platinum-cured, rather than peroxide-cured, tubing was made because of Watson-Marlow Bredel's belief in the inherent superiority of platinum-cured tubing.
Market research shows that the industry is of the same mind.
Platinum-cured and peroxide-cured silicone tubing can both be made to European Pharmacopoeia and other industry specifications, but platinum-cured tubing has a higher purity and lower leachability than peroxide-cured.
Peroxide-cured tubing contains a small residue of 2,4 DCBA (dichlorobenzoyl acids) as a by-product of the curing reaction, platinum-cured tubing has no 2.4 DCBA residues.
In addition, Watson-Marlow Bredel platinum-cured tubing has a much tighter surface cure, due to a more complete cross-link reaction taking place during manufacture.
This produces a smoother surface, leading to less protein binding. Watson-Marlow Bredel is able to manufacture and supply platinum-cured tubing at the same price as peroxide-cured tubing. As a result, it can supply this tubing as standard to all customers that require silicone tube.
Watson-Marlow Bredel appointed Mark Rawet to develop the new facility in May 2000. During six months of planning, the company worked with outside consultants, taking a clean-sweep approach to specification, and selecting procedures and equipment that would create the best tubing plant.
This was followed by a further six month build period.
The production facility required a Class J (10,000) clean room with air conditioning capable of operating 24/7 to ensure absolutely consistent operating conditions.
Services drop down from the ceiling to leave a clean, clear floor-space.
50mm and 65mm extruders were chosen to produce the full range of tubing without having to run either at the extremes of its performance. Further design considerations included taking large drives, including the drive for the mill used to condition and prepare the raw silicone, outside the clean room.
In addition to environmental considerations, the company has also looked closely at process control.
Laser and ultrasound measurement systems and closed loop control of the extruders allows tubing to be produced with consistency and extreme accuracy - well within the tolerances previously obtained from outside suppliers. Watson-Marlow Bredel was already certified to the ISO9001 quality standard and the new facility was developed in line with this.
As part of the commissioning process, Watson-Marlow Bredel has carried out extensive testing of its tubing, to establish both expected lifetimes and degree of flow rate stability over lifetime.
Both show substantial improvements over superceded products.
To date, in excess of 0.25 million pump test hours have been completed with further tests ongoing on a sample basis.
