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Robotic palletizing, pallet wrapping proves successful for Nephron

Equipment at Nephron’s South Carolina facility helps bring inhalation medications securely to market.

Nephron packages Albuterol Sulfate medication in a “carded” magazine of flexible plastic vials manufactured via a blow/fill/seal process.
Nephron packages Albuterol Sulfate medication in a “carded” magazine of flexible plastic vials manufactured via a blow/fill/seal process.

Nephron Pharmaceuticals Corp. is a global leader in the manufacture of generic respiratory medications. All of its products are manufactured in the U.S., and are supplied to retail pharmacies, hospitals, home care companies, long-term care facilities, mail-order pharmacies, and various other customers worldwide.

One of the Orlando, FL-based company's leading products is an Albuterol Sulfate inhalation solution– a bronchodilator used for the relief of bronchospasm in patients with reversible airway obstruction disease and acute attacks of bronchospasm. The small vials that carry the medication are sensitive to light and temperature and must be hermetically sealed in a foil pouch and stored in controlled conditions.

Nephron specializes in blow/fill/seal (BFS) manufacturing, a technology that allows a flexible plastic vial of medication to be formed, filled, and sealed in a continuous process without human intervention in a sterile, securely enclosed area. Filled vials are then foil-pouched and packed into cartons, with 12 cartons packed into a shipping case. The cases holding vials packaged for sale in a card format are placed on end for palletizing, with vials placed in an upright position for shipping.

When Nephron began planning this new production facility to meet its growing market demand, its goal was to make the entire production process as automated as possible. This included integrating the packaging line with laser-guided vehicles delivering medication and packaging material to the line to create fully automated production, as well as automated pallet building, protective corner board placement, and stretch wrapping systems for the packaging lines.

“This was intended to allow us to minimize line personnel,” says Patrick Smith, Nephron R&D Engineering. “Automation enables the process to run more efficiently, consistently, and with minimal human interaction that can potentially cause quality issues.“

In 2009, Brenton® Engineering, a Pro Mach company, had installed a custom robotic system to depalletize and palletize trays for the Albuterol Sulfate lines at Nephron. Given the success of that installation, Brenton was selected for the lines in the new South Carolina plant and to add a similar end-of-line automated system to a new line being built at the Orlando facility. The design of those systems began in late 2013.

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