Sanico boosts tablet inspection capacity with Insight Metal Detectors

Pharmaceutical contract manufacturer, Sanico NV, has increased tablet inspection at its Turnhout facility in Belgium to 100% with the installation of four INSIGHT PH metal detectors from LOMA SYSTEMS^®. The investment is part of the company’s continuous drive to improve quality standards for its global customer base.

“By installing an additional four metal detectors in our tabletting operation, we now offer the reassurance of contaminant inspection across our entire tablet range. This is a key part of our strategy to raise the bar in terms of the quality standards offered to our customers.

“LOMA^®'s INSIGHT PH unit impressed us with its highly intuitive user interface and streamlined, GMP design which offers easy disassembly for cleaning,” says Wim Roelants, production manager at Sanico.

The four INSIGHT PH units are in-line installations for metal contaminant inspection during compression. As the tablets leave the press, they pass through the units in containers before moving to blister packaging. Tablet size ranges from 3-25mm in diameter and total output is between 30,000 to 300,000 tablets per hour.

“The units operate 24 hours a day, five days a week in a controlled and monitored , clean-zone production environment to European Pharmacopeia standards – so design, efficiency and performance of the metal detector units are all key. Following a two week trial of one unit, Sanico was confident that our INSIGHT PH units would meet its stringent manufacturing requirements,” comments James Chrismas, of LOMA SYSTEMS.

Designed for increasingly demanding pharmaceutical standards, LOMA's stand-alone INSIGHT PH metal detector combines core technologies with innovative features to deliver tangible benefits to manufacturers of tablets and capsules. Highly resistant to vibration, the integrated digital search head and OPTIX detector management software guarantee detection and rejection of minute metal fragments, while maintaining high productivity and market leading sensitivity to all metals.