Equipment: The perfect fill

Lynda Searby, Packaging News, 03 February 2010

 

The right filling line will not only save cosmetic and personal care product manufacturers money, it will also help protect their brands. Lynda Searby reports

 

 

The cosmetics and personal care industry is all about image and reputation. Projecting the right image can be achieved through celebrity-fronted ad campaigns, but safeguarding a brand's reputation requires products to be unvarying in quality, cleanly filled and perfectly packaged.

 

The filling operation plays a distinctly unglamorous but very necessary role in ensuring the reality lives up to the glossy ad campaign. If product dribbles down the side of the container, or a bottle is too full or not full enough, or worse still, contaminated with another product, it will impact on the consumer's perception of that brand.

 

According to French filling equipment manufacturer Serac, the most reliable and accurate means of filling cosmetic and personal care products cleanly and efficiently is net weigh filling.

 

"The system is based on the weighing or ‘taring' of the container," explains Aymeric Vague, marketing manager of Serac's industrial, perfume, beauty and health divisions. "It is the only system that controls the quantity of product at the time of filling and not upstream. This gives the certainty that every container is filled with the stated quantity, a particular advantage for aerated liquids." In addition, he says, net weigh filling prevents costly over-filling of expensive products.

 

Serac's net weigh filler is a rotary machine called the Métis, which is designed for the high-speed filling of shampoos, shower gels and other personal care products. Serac says the machine's ability to cleanly fill containers at speeds of up to 600 bottles per minute (bpm) with viscous products is down to the fact the container platform rises up and allows the pipe to penetrate the container neck.

 

Ocme UK is another firm advocate of net weigh fillers for shampoos, conditioners and lotions on the basis that it is a clean and accurate filling method. "Because you're weighing the product, it's very accurate," says sales manager Peter Mayhew. "It's also very clean, because you have no contact with the bottle mouth."

 

Net profits

Ocme has just supplied a complete line to PZ Cussons that incorporates net weigh filling. Installed at the company's brand new facility in Agecroft, Manchester, the high-speed line fills shampoos and conditioners, of various viscosities, into a range of bottle sizes up to a maximum of 500ml.

 

Ocme has also just developed a new net weigh filler incorporating a two-part tank, which is capable of filling two products into one container - either simultaneously or one after the other. This allows companies to create ‘shake and mix' products with two components or package two products in one container that is split down the middle.

 

"It's a system we've been working on for some time for which we were hoping there might be take-up," says Mayhew. "At the moment a lot of companies are looking at it but nobody is going into it in a big way."

 

Net weigh fillers do have their disadvantages, though. One downside is that their load cells and electronics make them quite complex. Secondly, the equipment is expensive, and therefore only makes economic sense for companies filling hundreds, rather than tens, of containers a minute, says Nick Osborne, director of packaging systems supplier ACO Packaging.

 

ACO Packaging serves the lower-volume end of the market and says for these customers, volumetric or vacuum filling systems tend to be more suitable. The difference between the two is that volumetric or ‘piston' fillers fill to a preset volume, whereas vacuum fillers fill to a level.

 

According to Osborne, where vacuum systems come into their own is filling glass bottles. "The wall dimensions of glass bottles can vary wildly so if you put 250ml into a glass bottle and stand 10 bottles next to each other, your levels will all be different. That's where vacuum filling comes in because it fills to a level."

 

Volumetric fillers, on the other hand, are the method of choice where accuracy is important, says Osborne, for example, when filling expensive products like essential oils.

 

ACO says that its piston fillers are particularly accurate thanks to a custom-designed cylinder that is more accurate than off-the-shelf pneumatic cylinders, as well as being constructed entirely from stainless steel INOX 316 grade.

 

Volumetric systems

Besides manufacturing net weigh fillers, both Ocme and Serac make volumetric fillers, although Ocme says it has witnessed a shift away from volumetric fillers towards net weigh fillers. "Volumetric fillers have their place," says Ocme's Mayhew. "They are quite accurate but they are very difficult to clean in comparison with net weigh fillers. Volumetric fillers have a number of seals, whereas with weigh fillers there are no internal workings apart from a couple of spray balls and a lance, so you can clean the tank very quickly and effectively. This is particularly important today as most companies are frequently changing between products."

 

This view is backed up by Serac's Vague, who says: "The absence of gaskets, rotary joints and dead corners on rotary net weigh fillers guarantees perfect hygiene for every product."

 

The company says its Cronos volumetric linear system, however, is the better option where companies have relatively low output requirements.

 

French firm Hema, represented in the UK by F Jahn & Co, is another firm that designs rotary fillers and filler-capper monoblocs equipped with either volumetric or net weigh filling. Hema has just launched a new rotary net weigh filler called the GW, which is designed to offer cleaner, more accurate and more economical filling. It features non-drip valves to minimise product loss, as well as smaller-volume tanks, separate from the measuring system, for easy, fast and effective cleaning. GW fillers have already been installed at companies such as L'Oréal, Pierre Fabre, Yves Rocher and Colgate Palmolive.

 

Flow meters are the other type of filler often used on cosmetic and personal care lines. They have all the advantages of weigh fillers, in that they have few moving parts, and don't have the complications of load cells.

 

Quick cleaning

"A flow meter is basically a tube which takes the flow of the product and works out how much to open and shut," explains Peter Kierans, sales director of Optima Group Pharma UK. "The advantage is it's easy to sterilise and clean in place if you want to change from one product to another."

 

Optima's Kugler Linoline is a monobloc system equipped with flow meter filling for liquid and paste cosmetic applications.

 

The main limitation of the flow meter filler is that it is not suitable for shampoos and conditioners containing silicon. "You can only fill these with a net weigh filler," says Mayhew. "To use a flow meter, the product has to be conductive and silicon particles don't lend themselves to this."

 

The filling of products like nail varnish, pressed powders and mascara is even more specialist, to the extent where until recently it tended to be done manually because it was too expensive to automate, according to Keith Gooch, managing director of Logic TPS. Now, however, thanks to improvements in machine components, the advent of servo drives and better XY axis movements, it has become easier to design machines for these applications, says Gooch.

 

Consequently, there are more equipment manufacturers active in this field than in the past. One relative newcomer is Korean firm Woojung, represented in the UK by Logic TPS.

 

"Woojung has already knocked the German and Italian machinery manufacturers ‘for six' with the price and speed of its machines," he says. "In just under four years it has sold more than 30 lipstick machines at around $300,000 each, using new technology which uses silicon rubber moulds that are cheaper to produce and give a better finish than traditional metal moulds."

 

The same machine can be used to fill several different products, such as creams, nail varnish, lip balms and mascaras. "Companies tend to use the same base frame with several different filling stations on it," says Gooch. The exception to this is products like lipsticks, blushers and eye shadows, which require dedicated machines.

 

Net weigh filling, vacuum filling and flow meter filling all have their advantages and disadvantages. The decision of which one to invest in will depend on what you are filling, but all three will ensure the integrity of your brand is maintained.

 

 

LABORATORIOS RTB MADE UP WITH SERAC LINE

Serac has installed one of its Cronos machines at Spanish cosmetics company Laboratorios RTB for filling liquid soap, shower gel and haircare products sold under the Giorgi and Lida brands.

 

However, the project was not without its challenges. The Barcelona-based company wanted an extremely versatile filling/capping line, capable of processing products with varying viscosities and characteristics, in nine different shapes and sizes of container, including rectangular, oval and upside-down. Furthermore, some of the products contain alcohol, which meant the machine had to comply with ATEX standards. The line also had to accommodate eight different cap designs, from screw caps to click-on caps, pumps, sprays and push-pull closures.

 

Serac says its Cronos linear system has overcome these challenges without losing line speed as it is designed to cope with containers ranging in size from 50-350mm in height and 5-100mm in diameter. The containers can be transferred in adjustable trays which can be quickly adapted to the form and dimensions of each new container.

 

Machine settings are pre-programmed so that during each changeover, the new product to be filled is selected on the touch-screen and the filling nozzle speed and stroke is adjusted automatically. The machine, which complies with ATEX standards, is also designed for easy cleaning, which speeds up changeovers. The filling cylinders, for example, may be moved, cleaned and sterilised without being removed.