Schubert monoblock line for packaging luxury skin care products

Singapore-based cosmetic manufacturer, Best World International, invests in high-end modern technology from Schubert Cosmetics, promising greater quality standards and precision in its manufacturing processes. The technology is an agile and sustainable monoblock bottle filling line. The extremely compact system fills various viscous substances into a range of bottle formats with the highest filling accuracy and precision. This move ensures operations are kept cost-effective and flexible in the face of strong international competition.

Founded in 1990, Best World International specialises in the development and distribution of premium skin care, personal care, beauty, health and wellness brands. With its numerous subsidiaries, the companyis a key regional player in the industry, with its luxury skin care products now also in demand far beyond Asia – in North America, Oceania, the Middle East and Europe. Best World’s automation plans are focused onthreemain aspects. First, ensuring filing accuracy and precision to prevent underweight incidence. Second, minimising product wastage during format changes. Third, avoiding any potential damage to the sensitive products and packaging. The new line also had to be very agile with swift and simple format changes. It wouldalso need to cover a wide variety of formats in the future.

Stringent quality standards in both precision and performance

Heiko Steinbach, Project Manager at Schubert Cosmetics, explains: “The product portfolio in question at Best World currently comprises eleven different filling substances of widely varying viscosities, which have to be filled into five plastic and two glass bottle formats. A single format, for its part, can comprise of up to three individual components such as a bottle, a pump and a specialised lid.” Another challenge for the planned fully automatic filling and packaging line was to reliably ensure the highest filling accuracy of very small quantities of 15 millilitres per batch size up to 118 millilitres.

Together with the team at Best World, led by Lim Sze Huey, Group Manager for Product & Quality, the German packaging machine specialist designed the new line as a successor to its agile Vision line, which has already made a name for itself in the field of highly complex filling and packaging processes in the cosmetics industry.

“This highly innovative concept from Schubert Cosmetics is a perfect match for our ever-growing range, and can help us achieve greater nimbleness, efficiency as well as quality standards for delivering our promise to our customers,” says Huang Ban Chin, Chief Operating Officer of Best World International, outlining the decision to work with Schubert Cosmetics.

Flexible and agile in every respect

Based on Schubert’s proven TLM system components, the new packaging line demonstrates its exceptional flexibility and agility primarily through fast format changes, a very high format variety and low format costs. Furthermore, the entire filling and packaging process is efficiently integrated into a single line in a very compact manner. 3D printing is at the heart of the exceptionally simple and cost-effective format changes; with a few exceptions, all change parts are produced using the 3D printer.

In the compact line, the plastic and glass bottles are cleaned, precisely filled, sealed and then packed into pre-glued automatic sideload folding boxes in successive steps. The high demands for completeness and integrity of the products and packaging are ensured by several camera systems, which check the products at various points in the process and sort them out, if required, without interrupting the ongoing packaging process.

Accurate to the decimal point

The system also excels with its high filling accuracy (+/- 1 per cent) with quantities as small as 15 millilitres – even with very high-viscosity cosmetic products. To achieve this, the Schubert experts rely on eccentric screw pumps, which have proven their worth as dosing systems in many similar projects. “In combination with high-precision scales used before and after the filling process (net weighing) and with the fully automatic readjustment of filling quantities, we can achieve this exceptionally precise filling accuracy – at an impressive output of up to 100 bottles per minute,” adds Heiko Steinbach. Notably, this applies to all eleven formats with the various filling substances and cosmetics that are currently being processed on the machine.

State-of-the-art: Hygiene and cleaning

In an upstream cleaning process, the inside of the bottle is blown out with filtered air, while impurities such as dust particles are extracted via a vacuum before the bottles are fed into the filling station, which actually has two filling stations, each with eight filling points. In normal operation, only one of the two filling stations is active at any one time, enabling the second system to be cleaned simultaneously during ongoing production. In Best World’s new line, both the eccentric screw pumps and the filling points can be cleaned and sanitised in compliance with the CIP standard (CleaninginPlace) (a disinfection process to significantly reduce germ counts) – without requiring time-consuming disassembly.Schubert had considered theCIP system during development, and it has now been fully integrated into the line.

Only the good ones make it through the line

A further advantage of the monoblock unit is its sophisticated fault and quality control. Containers and components that do not meet quality standards are removed on specially designated rejection lanes. Rejection takes place, for instance, in the event of underweight fill quantities, incorrect formats or defects on the outer surface of the bottles, low cap closing torque, as well as broken components. At the same time, the Schubert Transmodul transport robot is filled with defect-free products via a storage/intermediate table, so that only completely filled Transmoduls enter the area for ready-to-dispatch packaging. If required, “good” bottles are also specifically selected in this step for a more precise IPC (InProcessControl) quality control.

From a single source: Serialisation and packaging

Before being packaged ready for dispatch, the bottles are then packed into an automatic sideload folding box, which is serialised to further optimise the packaging process. Verification of the respective carton component barcode – i.e. whether the correct packaging material is used – is carried out via barcode scanner. To this end, an alphanumeric bottom imprint is applied to the folding boxes before the products are loaded. The bottles are not packed into the folding boxes until this has been visually detected as flawless. The shipping cartons also receive a corresponding serialisation imprint, which is visually checked for correctness. In the event of incorrectly sealed cartons, a shift register rejects the individual cartons via a separate discharge chute.

Fast time-to-market thanks to 3D printing

3D printing via Schubert’s PARTBOX platform also enables the cosmetics manufacturer to print spare parts or new format parts itself. With only a few exceptions, all interchangeable parts can be easily reproduced in this manner. This significantly reduces delivery times to Singapore as well as the customer’s storage costs. Eddie Lai, Deputy General Manager for Best World’s manufacturing facility, applauds this sustainable approach to value creation: “3D printing on demand opens up many new possibilities for new formats. We were able to experience just how convenient this is during the joint development of the trays for feeding the individual components of our current bottle formats.” With the new line, Best World can be sure of speedy implementation of future formats and a further reduction in time-to-market.

Prodotti e tecnologie: GERHARD SCHUBERT

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