BioProgress orders first commercial Tabwrap machine

BioProgress, a provider of innovative delivery mechanisms for the pharmaceutical oral dosage markets, has placed a £1.5m order with Innomech Automation Solutions in Cambridgeshire, UK, to build the first full size commercial Tabwrap machine. This follows an extensive internal design programme within BioProgress and the production and testing of several prototype Tabwrap machines.

The decision to award the order to Innomech was taken in full consultation with Harro Hoefliger which is currently heavily committed to other projects with BioProgress and other customers. As a result, Harro Hoefliger could not commit to meeting the required timeframe for delivery of the first full sized demonstrable fully automated machine and enable the demonstration of the technology at the commercial launch which is targeted for November 2005.

Innomech is experienced in building complex machines to high specification pharmaceutical standards and meeting both European and FDA approval requirements. They specialise in the cross fertilisation of technologies, high accuracy pick & place systems, machine vision and precision measurement, control systems, lasers and advanced robotics. Innomech will build the first machine, but Harro Hoefliger will optimise the production machine design and then it is intended that they will build batches of commercial Tabwrap machines, supplying, commissioning and providing the necessary global after sales service.

The first commercial machines will have a design output of 120,000 tablets per hour but the design incorporates the potential to double this output and even greater outputs are feasible, enabling the technology to be coupled to some of the world's fastest tablet presses.

The Tabwrap process is revolutionary and incorporates state-of-the-art technology in fast tablet processing, innovative film cutting and a unique overlap film tamper-evident sealing process. The ability to manipulate the dissolution rates of the tablet wrapping film formulations enables BioProgress to design-in advanced rapid active release characteristics that are particularly important for analgesics.

The machine is planned to be demonstrable by September 2005 in time for a commercial launch in November at the CPhl Worldwide and the International Control Services Expo exhibitions in Madrid. It is then intended that the machine will be fully commissioned, operational and ready to install into one of a number of interested contract pharmaceutical manufacturers during the first quarter of 2006. This will enable product development and production to be carried out for customers who have ordered machines or the contract manufacture of Tabwrap products for those who wish to adopt the technology but do not initially wish to order their own machines.

Graham Hind, chief executive of BioProgress, said: 'As part of the ongoing process of developing the Tabwrap technology, we have provided several different developing working prototypes to customers and have received extremely positive feedback.

'The interest in this technology is now rapidly growing. The consumer wants a coated easy-to-swallow tablet but this currently means either a gelatin, sugar or cellulose spray coated tablet. All these solutions involve expensive batch based technologies which we believe are unsustainable in the long term in an environment where governments are closely reviewing the cost of pharmaceutical drugs and asking searching questions about the efficiency of the pharmaceutical manufacturing process.

'Technologies like ours, which are fast and continuous eliminating slow batch-based systems, can change the economics of the traditional tablet production process but also offer major new innovation opportunities for the pharmaceutical product marketeers.'