Ideal for labeling pharmaceuticals

For drug maker Victory Enterprises, providing the right label for their products is the key to success in the market competition. In addition to ensuring that the labels on OTC and prescription drug product packaging meet the strict government regulations and meet the production needs of new labels in a timely manner, the company also has to efficiently produce drug labels to meet market demand for drugs. .

“Because of potential printing needs, we have always wanted to control printing ourselves.” said Juan Carlos Macklis, production director at Victory. “But we also hope that an economical and simple printing solution will enable us to produce without printing.” Professional color labels."

Prior to the introduction of self-printing labels, Victory collaborated with two local offset manufacturers to print labels. Although quality is not a problem, the printing plant's production cycle can't really meet Victory's demand for quick turnaround. Ricardo Iniguez, market and information coordinator at Victory, said: “The quality of the labels they produce is good and our company does not require high label colors. But the problem is that the deadlines for the requirements are often not guaranteed. We need the factory to do it. It is possible to deliver on time and in accordance with regulations, but none of the printing plants have this service."

In 2003, at the WestPack trade show hosted by PMMI in California, Macklis and his team discovered the VP8020 digital color press from VIPColor Technologies, USA. "When we first saw the VP8020 on WestPack," Macklis said, "we were shocked by its printing capabilities and speed, and we need to know how compact its appearance is!" The ground area is 36.3 inches wide, 29.1 inches deep, and 58.3 inches high.)

For the past 20 years, Victory has developed and manufactured drugs for some of Mexico's largest drug chains, hospitals, and the Mexican Health Authority (SSA). After doing a lot of research on diseases and health conditions, Victory's drugs include a large number of non-patented US brands of OTC and prescription drugs. 50% of them are drugs like Vicsel (Prozac's generics), Deflenol, Viczen, Vistac, and so on.

Fenner Drives' portable digital label printers can produce colorful, high-quality labels to suit the operation of industrial conveyor belts, meet the need for pulley installations and on-demand packaging.

Victory has 105 employees and the factory covers an area of ​​35,000 square feet, of which 27,000 square feet is used for the granulation, packaging, quality control, research, development and administration of pharmaceuticals. The factory has two fully-charged automatic counting filling lines for filling tablets, capsules, desiccants, cotton swabs, capping and labeling. At the same time, the company also provides the use of three blister packaging machines to produce blister medicines. Cartons are printed by local processors.

Just as Victory does his best to ensure that his factory can meet SSA's stringent 100,000 cleanliness, temperature, humidity, pressure, and air extraction equipment, it is equally observant of the label's regulations. .

Victory also designed an additional layer for its label, using color coding to ensure that the drug is properly stored in the company's temperature-controlled warehouse. The application of color coding helped Victory greatly improve the efficiency of the supply chain, because the color bar code enables the staff to recognize the wrongly placed box at a glance.

With so many printing needs, Macklis said companies need to print and label themselves to help them save money on label inventory.

Since the spring of 2004, Victory has used the VP8020 digital color production system to print variable information labels for its vials. Another new system is Allen Datagraph's terminal equipment that includes the completion of the unwinding, die-cutting, and rewinding of printed labels. The labeling equipment consists of 3 systems: AD-2880 RH applicator from QuickLabel Systems, 2 CVC Technologies The company's CVC 300 applicator.

Macklis said: “The greatest benefit of using the VP8020 is its speed and durability. Thanks to the VP8020 and the new applicator, if necessary, we can print tags at 3 shifts per day, and the press can easily Complete these workloads."

Recently, Victory used the VP8020 to print close to 20,000 labels per 8-hour shift, while the printer was able to print anywhere from 100 to 9,000 sheets. The system uses four-color printing (C, M, Y, K). The resolution of 600 x 800dpi can ensure that Victory uses a large number of spot colors when printing its bottle labels, including blue, red, green, yellow, orange and yellow. Purple and black. Printed with a semi-gloss, pressure-sensitive label roll, there are three sizes for die cutting: 4.7 x 1.7 inches, 5.1 x 1.9 inches, and 6.3 x 2.2 inches.

Victory uses a patented instant-melt ultra-fine toner technology for color digital printers to print its labels on relatively non-patented OTC and prescription drug bottles.

The printing method used by the VP 8020 is dry electrophotographic LED exposure—using dry ultra-fine toner and each array has an array of LED lenses instead of a laser imaging head. According to Adrian Down, marketing director at VIPColor, "arrayed LEDs are easy to clean and maintain, and they don't include moving parts that can fail or fail."

The press also uses the instant melting ultra-fine toner technology described by VIPColor's Cool Fusion. “When the light energy is stimulated instead of using the heat-sensitive roller, very fine toner melts onto the substrate. The roller is not very suitable for printing pressure-sensitive stickers and it is slower.”

We need an economical and simple printing solution that will give us the professional color labels that we can produce like a professional label manufacturer without the need for a printing process.

"The system provides a very straightforward and easy-to-use substrate path, which avoids deformation, melting of the substrate, and the occurrence of extrusion sticking to the machine."

Down added that Cool Fusion technology allows the VP8020 to handle a wide range of labels and label rolls of different materials, including paper and film of different thicknesses, at a maximum speed of 17.7 feet per minute.

Printed worksheets, unit settings, detection of consumption, and all functional configurations are managed through a central touch screen based on the Windows operating system.

Another advantage of the VP8020 is its user-friendly performance. According to Iniguez, before the installation of the equipment, the operators had been trained in equipment installation, maintenance and practice so that they had no problems with the operation of the machine. He also said that the job of replacing the substrate takes only 10 to 15 minutes, and the maintenance of the machine includes the overall routine cleaning and the determination of the substrate roll.

Thanks to new digital presses and labeling equipment, Victory has a better control of the label printing and post-processing processes. Macklis said that a recent study by Victory that evaluated the ROI of these systems showed that within the first 10 months of installing these devices, the company reduced its subsequent processing costs by 70%.

“First-hand information we have seen shows that internal printing is more cost-effective and efficient than external printing,” Macklis said. “The VP8020 provides us with a simple printing solution that allows us to be in our own factory. Produce the professional grade labels we need.”

Source of information: packagingdigest china