the tube multiplierstarting immediately, the pharmaceuticals enterprise medice arzneimittel produces its medice® gel for burns and wounds and its semisolid soventol® products in its own factory. for this purpose, the company invested in a new, highperformance filling system the &ldquofp 181&rdquo by oystar iwk.stutensee, july 2012. it would be hard to find a neighbourhood pharmacy which does not sell the proven wound and skin treatment products by the iserlohnbased pharmaceuticals enterprise medice whether for scrapes, insect stings, allergic reactions or minor burns &mdash the applications for soventol et al. are manyfold. the manufacturer&rsquos quality criteria for its products are equally high. this led medice to take the decision last year, as part of its strategic realignment, to put an end to the contract packaging of its soventol® hc creme and soventol® gel products and bring it inhouse. however, the old facility was only capable of handling around three million tubes per year, so it was not nearly big enough. the search began for a new, more powerful tube filling system.the answer was found in the &ldquofp 181&rdquo by oystar iwk, a leading, international supplier of tube filling machinery. the system meets all of medice&rsquos needs to a t, with stateoftheart technology, a gmp1compliant design and access from all sides for thorough cleaning. in addition, the fp 181 is easy to use and needs few operators.intuitive menu navigation&ldquowe have been running the fp 181 for six months now and we are completely satisfied&rdquo. this was the first impression of reiner pöstges, head of the production and technology business unit at medice. the operators especially appreciate the intuitive menu navigation and ergonomics of the &ldquoteos&rdquo hmi touch panel, developed by the oystar group. &ldquoeach individual process step is clearly displayed on the 15.4inch widescreen display&rdquo, explained pöstges. &ldquoin addition, it is a simple thing to manage the format data and the quick access to batch protocols and recipes are of great help to us in process validation.&ldquoswitching product is a snap because most format parts can be changed without tools and the transporter rises or lowers automatically. &ldquoit only takes three tubes for the system to set the exact fill weight for a new format,&rdquo reported torsten ebel, a fitter at medice. &ldquoin order to find the precise fill weight so rapidly, the tube filler software automatically calibrates the servomotordriven piston stroke.&ldquofour products in nine formatsaltogether, the fp 181 at medice is packaging four different products creams and gels in nine different tube formats ranging from 15 to 100 grams. the system fills aluminium tubes with threefold seams at a rate of up to 100 tubes per minute and then automatically packages them into collapsible boxes using the oystar iwk sc 5 cartoning machine.  a production campaign consists of up to four tons of bulk goods. these are filled into socalled &ldquoinliner&rdquo in batches of 1,000 kilograms each. inliners are multilayered plastic bags which are stored in an intermediate bulk container ibc and placed next to the tube filling machine during filling. a feeder consisting of a progressive cavity pump and a 10litre accumulator then moves the product to a dispensing station. &ldquoby switching to inliners, we are breaking completely new ground&rdquo, explains martin becker, head of packaging at medice. &ldquohowever, the entire system has run stably and seamlessly since we started it up. we have already nearly doubled our efficiency in filling and packaging tubes by compared to before&ldquowe also skip the complex process of cleaning containers which come into contact with the product, and validating that cleaning. furthermore, we minimise the risk of contamination and save space needed for storage.steps have also been taken for the further expansion of production. the fp 181 is designed to be outfitted with modules like a heat welding station and a cutting station to allow for the additional processing of plastic andor laminate tubes.side bar&ldquofp&rdquo tube filling systemthe &ldquofp 181&rdquo by oystar iwk can fill metal, plastic and laminate tubes from 10 to 60 mm in diameter and 60 to 250 mm long. this equates to a fill volume of 1.5 to 400 ml of product. up to 120 tubes per minute can be filled and sealed. this makes the fp 181 the fastest single head tube filler currently available on the market.in addition to producing various tubes, the filling system can be used for other cosmetic applications, such as filling bottles or jars. control technologies based on servomotors ensure technical precision during filling. it can also integrate the lobe pump dispensing system. using lobe pumps will further reduce the setup and cleaning time.the fp 181 is supplemented with five other fpseries models which can handle up to 300 tubes per minute. about medicethe medice arzneimittel pütter gmbh & co. kg, based in the town of iserlohn in germany&rsquos sauerland, is a mediumsized familyowned enterprise and one of the top 50 pharmaceuticals manufacturers in germany. its product portfolio encompasses pharmaceutical products, medicinal products and supplements. the company was founded in 1949 and has more than 450 employees at present.www.medice.de about oystar iwkiwk verpackungstechnik gmbh is a globally operating company in the oystar group with approximately 330 staff. the company manufactures and sells cartoning machines, tube filling and sealing machines, in addition to complete packaging concepts from a single source. the company&rsquos portfolio aims at applications for the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries. a further focus is placed on the company&rsquos service business. worldwide sales are supported by oystar&rsquos own sales and service companies in france, the usa, thailand and china as well as commercial agencies throughout the world. about oystar groupoystar. the packaging group is one of the world&rsquos leading suppliers of packaging machinery, technology and services. oystar has extensive knowhow in the key industries of dairy products and food, as well as pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. based in stutensee near karlsruhe, germany, the holding company currently represents 10 manufacturing companies in europe and asia as well as numerous sales and service companies. at present oystar holding employs a workforce of approximately 1,400 worldwide and generated a total of approximately eur 250 million in sales in 2012.www.oystargroup.com 
