Why Deblister?
Q. Why remove tablets and capsules from blister packs?
Improve production yield…
A. On every blister packing line, a certain quantity of the blister packs produced will be rejected during or after production for the following reasons:
Frequently, during blister packing, the product filler jams momentarily leaving a pocket empty. The machine detects this and rejects the blister after sealing
Poor printing
Faulty batch number
Wrong expiry date
Wrong materials have been used
Often, the recovered tablet can be returned to the line for repacking.
Q. What are the alternatives to deblistering?
Dispose of the wasted packs intact meaning that you lose the value of the product and incur maximum waste disposal costs.
Separate the packs and product manually and dispose of them separately.
Q. Why not just improve the performance of your blister packing line?
A. Often blister packers are only manufactured to an optimum specification of 95% yield. Taking into consideration the time and costs involved in modifying the machine to yield the last 5%, it is much simpler and more sensible to incorporate a separate process using a PRESS-OUT deblistering machine.
Also, no matter how efficient the blister packing line, each time the machine is started up for a new batch, an initial trial run is made with live product producing many rejects. Often, even good blister packs produced in a test run cannot be marketed as they do not form part of the validated production batch.
These set-up rejects are unavoidable, and as they create considerable amounts of rejects, deblistering is still a very worthwhile procedure to deal with set-up rejects alone.
Reduce waste…
Q. Can you dispose of the waste foil with regular paper trash?
A. Yes. In fact, many companies achieve vast savings through this application alone. It is very expensive to pay for incineration or disposal of active product and, of course, if the filled blister is incinerated the company is paying high rates for the incineration of large air spaces and packaging materials unnecessarily.
Improve operator motivation…
Q. Is it not cheaper for staff to press out the blisters by hand?
A. Recovery by hand of 50,000 blisters costs about $16,650 in labor costs alone. The job is painful for operators, can lead to repetitive strain injury, is extremely de-motivating, and is a wasteful use of human resources.
Where it is not possible to justify a fully automatic machine, there are small-scale manual machines available which can allow deblistering at a rate of up to 30 blisters per minute.
