Atritor Limited of Coventry, England have recently handed over a 3-line powder processing facility to mill and classify a wide range of special pharmaceutical excipient powders.

Because of the wide range of tablet types and associated active pharmaceutical substances which are combined with excipients, the particle size distributions of these carriers are crucial to the behaviour of the drug, from ingestion to absorption.

With these criteria in mind it was important that the producer select a powder processing specialist with the following qualities.

• Able to supply dry milling and micronising equipment to produce powders with d50's from 70 down to 1.6 microns



• A trusted track record of supplying powder processing equipment to the pharmaceutical industry and particularly Borculo Domo's principal customers



• Able to supply independent air classification equipment to produce extra-special products by separating coarse and fine streams from the first milling stage



• An understanding of the requirements of GMP process equipment design for the food and pharmaceutical industry and associated experience of process equipment validation to satisfy MCA and FDA standards



• In-house knowledge of process control automation to supply the latest in PLC and MMI systems to communicate with the customer's DMS system



• Well established experience in international projects combined with a willingness to source from and work with, local suppliers preferred by the customer



• A comprehensive test facility where materials can be tested on equipment similar to that to be supplied

To ensure that the equipment and associated systems were correctly sized and specified, the principal customer carried out extensive test programmes to secure process guarantees to meet rigorous particle size distribution specifications.

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