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Report: Innovative New Pharma & Medical Devices at PACK EXPO Las Vegas

PMMI Media Group editors fanned out across the many booths at PACK EXPO Las Vegas to bring you this Innovations Report. Here’s what they saw in the pharma and medical devices categories.

Image #1 in the article text.
Image #1 in the article text.

Since medical marijuana represents a portion of the briskly growing cannabis market, we opted to include two innovative cannabis-related packaging technologies in this Pharmaceutical and Medical Device section of our PACK EXPO Innovations Report. Image #1 in the article text.Image #1 in the article text.

A primary challenge with packaging cannabis is that the weight variance of the empty jar is often greater than the total weight of the product being packaged. A tare gross weighing system eliminates any inconsistencies by weighing the empty jar and then subtracting the weight of the empty jar from the gross weight of the filled jar to determine the actual net weight of product in each jar.

Spee-Dee Packaging Machinery Inc. used PACK EXPO Las Vegas to unveil just such a system. It’s a fast, accurate cannabis filling system (1) that accounts for those tiny fluctuations in glass jar weight, thus eliminating problematic inaccuracy that wastes product.

The system’s accuracy of 0.01 g reduces costly product loss for fill sizes from 3.5 to 7 g. Vibratory settling helps product flow into containers. The system rejects under and overweights. Integrated with a multi-head weigher, the system provides the fastest, most accurate fills of flower or ground cannabis on the market, according to the company.

In terms of speeds, the system is able to operate more quickly than many producers will need. It accurately fills as many as 40 jars/min with a range of 1 g to 28 g of flower or ground cannabis per jar.

Image #2 in the article text.Image #2 in the article text.In addition this new cannabis filling system features a simple design that enables thorough cleaning. A sanitary funnel and conveyor system ensures hygienic filling with quick changeover while a stainless-steel frame and open base eliminate harborage areas and allow for easy cleaning. Tool-less, quick-change star wheels and rails enable fast product changeovers.

Orics introduced a new M10 machine (2) designed specifically for a special Child-Resistant package that holds CBD-infused candy bars. The intermittent-motion machine has two tools mounted on a rotary table. The operator loads thermoforms into the four cavities on one tool and then puts a candy bar in each. The operator then presses two buttons to activate the machine. The freshly loaded tool rotates into an evacuation, backflush, and lidding application station. When lidding is in place, the four-cavity tool rotates out of the sealing station, the operator removes the finished packs, and the cycle is repeated.

While much of this is fairly routine MAP procedure, what makes this application notable from an innovation standpoint is that the thermoformed PET container has two notches left and right that are designed to fit into a slot in the paperboard carton into which the primary package is inserted. Children can’t read the package-opening instructions on the carton, and thanks to the notches left and right on the primary package, they won’t know how to pull the primary package out of the carton. There’s also a flap designed into the top of the pack to further impede a child’s access to the primary package.


Watch video   

Watch a video of the machine in action.


Innovative containers

An especially clever tablet and capsule container in the plastic category was shown by a company called R&D Leverage, which is primarily a tool Image #3 in the article text.Image #3 in the article text.maker for injection molding, blow molding, and injection stretch blow molding machinery. But it has now come up with a patent pending concept for an injection stretch blow molded bottle called DispensEZ (3) with a sort of a ramp on one inner sidewall where the shoulder meets the neck. So when you reach inside to pull out a tablet or capsule, it slides right out on the ramp rather than getting hung up on the inner shoulder. This is clearly aimed at the elderly and others whose dexterity makes pill and tablet dispensing challenging at best.

Senior Molding Expert Kent Bersuch at R&D Leverage is the one who came up with the idea after finding himself frustrated by vitamins and medications getting bunched up in the shoulder of the bottle. “I’d wind up dumping many more pills than I wanted, or the pills would bounce out of my hand and go down the drain,” says Bersuch. “Eventually I heated a bottle with a heat gun and molded the shoulder of a bottle to create a ramp.” And thus was born DispensEZ.

R&D Leverage, remember, is a maker of tooling, so management has no plans for making bottles on a commercial basis. Instead, says CEO Mike Stiles, the firm is looking for a brand that would either purchase or license the Intellectual Property behind the concept. “We have multiple inquiries from prospects who are currently evaluating our patent documentation and considering options,” says Stiles.

Stiles adds that while development work on the DispenseEZ packer bottle relied on using the two-stage reheat-and-stretch-blow process, the convenient dispensing feature can also be incorporated in any of the following methods:

• Single-stage ISBM in PET, PP, and (perhaps) HDPE

• Injection blow in PP or HDPE

• Extrusion-blow using a variety of resins.

The feature is functional over a wide variety of finish sizes (33 mm and larger) and can be incorporated into containers with existing tamper-evident or child-resistant requirements.


Watch video   

Watch a descriptive video of this innovation.


Safe sample transport is an important part of healthcare operations, but many portable carriers that protect temperature-sensitive samples are bulky and heavy. These can be burdensome for sales representatives to carry throughout a typical 8-hour workday.Image #4 in the article text.Image #4 in the article text.

At Healthcare Packaging EXPO, CAVU Group introduced its prote-go: a lightweight sample transportation system (4) that protects temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals and medical devices from the first meeting of the day through the last.

The company developed the system to transport a variety of content—pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and other biomedical samples—with diverse temperature requirements in all seasons. Weighing less than eight pounds, the carrier is a lightweight product convenient for a salesperson to carry.

The prote-go is a soft-sided, leak-proof tote that can be personalized. “With over 25 L of payload space, the tote has added room for a laptop or other accessories,” says CAVU Product Manager David Haan. “Best of all, the prote-go sample carrier does not require lengthy or complicated packing and conditioning processes. Because the system is engineered with phase-change material, the system resets by simply storing the tote overnight, open, and at room temperature.”

Next we look at diagnostics, the demand for which has been soaring. Yet packaging diagnostic reagents can be challenging for a number of reasons:

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LAST CHANCE TO SAVE! New Tech for Life Sciences at PACK EXPO Southeast