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Pharma Manufacturer Fully Automates Line to Keep Pace with Liquid Filling

Bavarian firm Bionorica boosts performance by implementing new machines around its high-speed filling machine, automating liquid production from depalletizing, unpacking, and bottle inspections to cartoning.

German pharmaceutical manufacturer Bionorica’s headquarters in Neumarkt (Bavaria)
German pharmaceutical manufacturer Bionorica’s headquarters in Neumarkt (Bavaria)

Bionorica produces effective herbal medicines including Bavaria’s best-selling cold remedy, Sinupret. The owner-run German company has grown from being a one-man firm to a global player employing some 1700 people and operating in more than 40 countries worldwide with headquarters located in Neumarkt, Bavaria.

At Bionorica’s Neumarkt site, non-sterile liquids are filled and packed in glass bottles on two liquid lines for therapeutic nose, throat, and lung applications. To improve the overall equipment effectiveness of its liquid production, Bionorica decided to automate various steps which were previously executed manually. In addition to depalletizing and unpacking of “safe packs”—foil-sealed packs providing maximum protection for several dozen glass bottles—Bionorica fully automated feeding and inspection of the bottles on one of their two liquid lines initially.

The goal was for all modules on the packaging line to deliver the same high level of performance. Although the filling machine theoretically has a maximum output of approximately 200 bottles/min, this speed had never been reached in practice because the machine’s capacity had not been met by the performance of the other modules, notably the cartoner. For this reason, Bionorica opted to replace every module on the line apart from the filling machine.

Four of the modules on the new packaging line are from the Karlsruhe-based Romaco Group, which develops, manufactures, and distributes GMP-compliant, high-tech machines for the pharmaceutical industry. “Romaco has a broad, premium-quality product portfolio, which is a great advantage when implementing complex plants like ours, because it means we can source several machines from just one supplier,” explains Howard Fick of Bionorica’s Engineering department. “They also convinced us with good value for [the] money, solutions that are individually tailored to our needs, and prompt, efficient support.”

  • In the first section of the fully automatic liquid line, glass bottles delivered in safe packs are automatically depalletized and unpacked with the help of a Romaco Macofar MED003 unpacking system.

  • Bottles are then passed to an inspection unit, featuring a new technology developed jointly by Romaco and Bionorica for detecting and removing faulty bottles.

  • In the next step, the bottles are fed via a rotary table to the filling machine, where they are filled with product, fitted with a screw cap, and labeled.

  • A Romaco Promatic PC4250 continuous motion cartoner subsequently packs the bottles into cartons together with a leaflet.

  • Finally, they are serialized with a 2D code and then packed into cases, sealed and serialized again by a case packer-palletizer before being automatically loaded onto pallets at the end of the line.

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