At the fair trade, Steriline showed a Vial Filling and Capping Machine (VFCM100) under double-wall isolator, a solution developed to increase the production capacity of a Contract Development Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) currently supplying COVID-19 vaccines worldwide. “During the last period,” affirms Federico Fumagalli, Chief Commercial Officer at Steriline, “we delivered a good number of machines and complete lines to produce COVID-19 vaccines both in Europe and other continents. However, the increase in the demand of these type of machines was due not only to manufacture this kind of drugs since several companies already plan to convert them for the production of something else such as biotech drugs in next few years”.
The VFCM100 under double-wall isolator can reach a production capacity of 6.000 pieces/hour. The machine, developed for injectable drugs, is equipped with 4 peristaltic pumps, allowing a potential infinite filling capacity, a 100% check-weighing and can handle glass vials from 2ml to 100ml. With an easy format change, the machine can also handle plastic vials. The double-wall isolator guarantees sterility throughout the whole process protecting not only personnel from the product but especially minimising the risk of product contamination. Once vials are capped, a conveyor belt moves them into a printer where every cap is marked with the relative batch details for tracking.
In addition to the versatility, the customer choice fell on Steriline’s solution because of its space-saving sizes that comfortably fits in the available processing area. “Steriline’s solution are very compact” states Mirko Ebeling, Managing Director at Ebetech GmbH and Steriline’s agent for the Central and Northern Europe. “On the market, there is not right now a double-wall isolator with comparable sizes and compliant with the current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) as the Steriline’s one. This feature is very appreciated by those customers that need to optimise space without renouncing any element in terms of quality and safety”.
