Nelipak Healthcare Packaging has entered into an agreement of intent with Optel Group to explore commercial opportunities to bring a new seal inspection technology to the medical device market.
When it comes to medical devices, the quality of the packaging seal is paramount to maintaining the necessary sterility of the entire product. Leveraging Optel’s vision inspection and traceability systems and Nelipak’s understanding of custom thermoformed packaging for healthcare packaging, the two companies are pursuing commercialisation of a solution that will allow the quality of a seal to be verified in real time, controlled environments while detecting contaminants and other anomalies such as creases.
The process will take only seconds, minimising impact on production, while also eliminating the risk of human error during visual inspection.
“Foreign-body contaminants or poorly sealed vacuum-formed trays can create major setbacks for getting a product to market or cause time-consuming and costly product recalls,” said Michael Butler, Senior Account Director at Optel. “The market stands to benefit significantly from a more precise and consistent method of inspecting and validating seal quality using algorithms preconfigured to a company’s exact specifications.”
“We are solely focused on understanding the specific needs and stringent requirements of the healthcare packaging market in the design and manufacture of rigid trays sealed on Nelipak heat tray sealers and other platforms,” said Seán Egan, director of global marketing at Nelipak.
Nelipak supplies products manufactured to exacting specifications under cleanroom conditions, with cleanrooms accredited to ISO 14644 with the majority to ISO Class 7 standard.