MARCO Ltd (United Kingdom) - A weighing and filling system supplied by MARCO is playing an important role at EuroCaps’s state-of-the-art production facility. EuroCaps Limited, a part of DCC Nutraceuticals, is a leading contract manufacturer of soft gelatine capsules, servicing the vitamins, mineral and dietary supplement (VMS) markets worldwide. DCC Nutraceuticals, a division of DCC plc, has the flexibility to produce soft gelatine capsules, tablets or hard shell capsules, in bulk or packed form.

MARCO’s solution is based around two custom-designed stainless steel DataMaster smart scales running the Lot-Manager module of MARCO’s innovative Trac-IT Recipe Formulation Module. The DataMaster units are powerful self-contained weighing and control stations with operator friendly, PC based, touch screen displays. These are used for weighing out the active ingredients and the gel materials for the capsule shells. The active fills may range from single oils such as evening primrose through to multi-vitamin supplements with over 30 individual ingredients. The Trac- IT system brings traceability and control to the whole filling process from goods-in to finished product. As product is used, the Trac-IT system automatically updates stock levels and keeps control over quarantined products at goods-in.

EuroCaps’ QA Technical Manager Michael Bolt is very positive about the benefits of the MARCO Solution:

“MARCO took the time to listen to what we wanted and then came up with positive and practical solutions. Their system not only carries out accurate ingredient weighing but also provides us with important data relating to our process from goods-in to packaged product. All products are manufactured to order and the minimum order size depends on the size of the capsule: the bigger the capsule, the smaller the minimum order. Typically we produce capsule quantities ranging from 100,000 to 10 million at a time. Controlled stocks of key raw materials allow us, in many cases, to respond to customer demands within two to four weeks. We now have over 650 live formulations and this is expanding continuously as new products are developed and introduced. These products range from the encapsulation of customer supplied fills from simple oils to highly complex, multi-ingredient suspensions. Keeping track on all the variations is a daunting task. The nature and variety of the ingredients require that they are weighed out manually. In the past, this placed the onus on the operators to ensure the correct amounts of each ingredient were weighed out correctly. The MARCO system brings complete control to the process. It keeps constant checks on what is being weighed and highlights any variances so that simple remedial action can be taken”.

Product safety and quality are of paramount importance to EuroCaps. The company has invested significant amounts of time and money to establish a leading facility so that they comply with existing and future European and National legislation in the formulation and production of their products.

As Michael Bolt concludes:

“We are licensed by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency and British Retail Consortium accredited, allowing us to supply to leading supermarkets and retail outlets. Control and traceability are essential within the process to ensure our customers receive the highest quality products. Thorough analysis is performed on all ingredients at stages through the production process and final QC analysis confirms the product meets specifications before it is shipped. The MARCO system plays a major part in the process and there is no doubt that it has had a positive effect on our bottom line profitability.”