Yesterday the packaging machinery manufacturer IWK Verpackungstechnik GmbH celebrated its 120th anniversary with an in-house exhibition at the company headquarters in Stutensee near Karlsruhe. The international market leader in tube filling and sealing machinery and cartoning equipment used the occasion to present its current machinery innovations for the pharmaceuticals and cosmetics industry.
Stutensee, September 12, 2013. Established 120 years ago, the roots of IWK Verpackungstechnik stretch back to the era of the industrial revolution in the 19th century. As a pioneer in machinery construction for filling and sealing tubes, the company founders Leopold and Wilhelm Holtz have placed the greatest emphasis on technical precision and high quality from the beginning, and with great success. On 28 July 1893, Willem Karel van Dedem, a Dutch colonial secretary in the Haag, ordered the first tube filling machine for a factory in Batavia, Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta, Indonesia).
The tubes were to be filled with opium paste, then used as a pain relieving salve for wounds. Won over by the quality of the first machine, the colonial secretary placed various additional orders with the company. That’s how IWK Verpackungstechnik rapidly grew into an international market leader for tube fillers and cartoning machines. Today the machines of this Karlsruhe-based pioneer are operating in 79 countries around the globe.
On the occasion of its 120th anniversary, IWK Verpackungstechnik presents its latest machinery at its own in-house exhibition. The newest development by the market leader is the VI 5, a vertical cartoning machine that immediately expands the product range in the lower-output category. Thanks to its expandable, modular loading unit, the VI 5 can pack a broad variety of products, from tubes to bottles to the manually packing of bags, blister packs, pouches and other products that can be fed by hand. It can handle outputs of up to 75 cartons per minute.
The company also exhibited the SC 5, with an application well-suited to the pharmaceutical industry: it can package glass bottles. The continuous motion cartoning machine can handle outputs of up to 200 cartons per minute. The areas of application are just as diverse. The machine is suited to packaging tubes, blister packs, vials, ampules, bags, sachets, pouches, bottles, trays, spoons, and needles.
Compact Tube Fillers
In the tube filling and sealing machines segment, IWK Verpackungstechnik exhibited the FP 10. With 10 work stations and an output up to 70 tubes per minute, this is one of the most compact tube filling machines in the manufacturer’s range. The FP 10 fills and seals plastic, laminate and metal tubes, and it has a fill volume between 1.5 and 350 ml.
The market leader also presented the FP 34-1. This single-track filling machine can reach outputs of up to 120 tubes per minute. With a total of 34 work stations, the machine is extremely flexible and can be equipped with options such as a robotic tube feeder and multiple color filling. It also has a fill volume between 1.5 and 350 ml. IWK Verpackungstechnik has built a rotary lobe pump into the FP machine as a dosing system.
With its clean-in-place (CIP) design, this filling machine can be flushed in only five minutes, reducing its downtime significantly. The rotary lobe pump is an upgrade package that can be integrated into all tube fillers made by IWK Verpackungstechnik. In addition, the company presented the FP 34-2 at its in-house exhibition, a filling system with two dosing stations. The FP 34-2 is capable of output up to 220 tubes per minute.
Fully Automated Packaging Lines
IWK Verpackungstechnik also used its in-house exhibition to present a tube filling and packaging line composed of the TZ 201, a fully automated tube feeder that can handle an output of up to 300 tubes per minute, and the FP 46-2, the next generation in the FP line of filling systems. The FP 46-2 can fill and seal up to 220 tubes per minute. The tubes are then transferred to the SC 4 cartoning machine. The continuous motion cartoning machine can process up to 450 cartons per minute. This packaging line can handle other products in addition to tubes, such as blister packs and ampules.
The company also offers the TZ 201 tube feeder in combination with the TFS 80-2 tube filling and packaging line. With its diagonal transport, tubes are fed and ejected horizontally. This two-track machine fills tubes up to 400 ml at an output of up to 200 tubes per minute. The TFS 80-2 has room for all conventional options and can seal plastic and laminate tubes as well as metal tubes without changing attachments. The line also comes with the Roboter Feed Cell, an extremely flexible robotic transfer unit that can be equipped with an enormous range of feeders. The unit can execute up to 100 cycles per minute.
Up to 510 Tubes per Minute
For toothpaste applications, IWK Verpackungstechnik exhibited the high-speed TFS 80-6 tube filling machine combined with the SC 3 cartoning machine. The combined system can handle output of up to 510 tubes per minute, with fill volumes of 5 to 200 ml. The system is designed for single-, two- and three-component filling. The direct transfer from the TFS 80-6 to the SC 3 cartoning machine can be equipped with an in-line checkweigher to ensure 100% weight monitoring with feedback to the system to adjust tube fill volumes.
