Shield Medicare invests in major expansion programme
Shield Medicare is developing its 15,000ft2 manufacturing facility in Ystradgynlais, near Swansea, following a 60% growth rate over the last two years.
The company, which manufactures cleanroom contamination control products for customers in the healthcare sector, installed two Watson-Marlow Bredel peristaltic pumps in 2001, a 605Di/L and a 624Di/L to dispense cleanroom disinfectants agent into one-litre 'spray bottles'. The accuracy of the dosage of 70% alcohol in the product is important because the bottles feature the sterishield delivery system 'bag in bottle'.
Shield Medicare looked at a number of options before deciding that peristaltic pumps offered the best technique for aseptic filling. They are fundamentally different from other positive displacement pumps in that the fluid being pumped remains completely contained within the tube element, never making contact with any of the pump's moving parts. Not only does this give an advantage in terms of maintaining sterility, it also leads to lower maintenance, higher reliability and more simple cleaning procedures.
Andrew Richards, production manager at Shield Medicare, said: 'Watson-Marlow's STA-PURE tubing has lasted 14 months which is good considering the nature of the product and the volumes that the tube has been handling on a daily basis. As our business grows we're looking at other applications that could benefit from using peristaltic pumps.' The pumps run five hours a day, five days a week pumping more than 15,000l of sterilising agent a week.