Page 41 - Packaging News Magazine Sep-Oct 2021

September-October 2021 | www.packagingnews.com.au | PANDEMIC PACKAGING
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automated production facility to scale up manufacturing volumes of Covid- 19 and other diagnostic tests.
Fast forward to February 2021 and the Biden administration selected Ellume’s COVID-19 Home Test kits as one of the key enablers to reopen the economy and help control the pan- demic in the US. To make this hap- pen, the US Departments of Defense and Health and Human Services invested US$231.8 million in Ellume to help scale the US manufacturing base and capacity to over 19 million test kits per month by the end of 2021.
Leveraging the global Fuji Network of Distributors, JL Lennard with Fuji Machinery (Japan) and Formost Fuji (USA) have collaborated with Ellume again to supply all their primary packaging machinery to meet this incredible production target.
David Boekemann, MD of JL Lennard, said, “We would like to thank Ellume for putting their trust in our companies and congratulate them for their monumental achievements to date. We look forward to this project being completed in record time.”
FIRM FOUNDATIONS
The successful upscaling of the Brisbane facility laid the foundation for Ellume’s contract win. PKN asked Steve Waters, packaging sales man- ager at JL Lennard, about the scope and execution of the project.
The Fuji Flow Wrappers installed at Ellume Brisbane are three FW3410B Alpha 8 and five FW3410BCX machines.
“The reason different models were supplied was that these machines could be sourced at short notice as some of these units came in from Fuji France and Vietnam. This was an advantage we had at the beginning of the project,” Waters said.
“The project kicked off in March 2020 when Ellume and JL Lennard
Due to Fuji’s technology we were able to reach these speeds without damaging the film and give Ellume its hermetically sealed product.” — Steve Waters, JL Lennard
“The Fuji wrapper automatically increases the sealing temperature with any increased speed, and vice versa. This helps achieve a perfect seal, along with not burning the film at higher speeds.”
On the flow wrappers, the in-feed conveyor has an ‘attachless’ belt in- feed system, which allows for greater control over the positioning of each product in relation to the film.
Adopting this system allowed Ellume to use the Fuji Flow wrapper as a stand-alone unit or install it into an automated system (such as that supplied by Bosch Australia Manufacturing Solutions).
“A transfer unit (Delta drive) helps control the lightweight Ellume products, which allowed us to pinpoint each product correctly for wrapping. This also ensured we had a perfect, hermetic seal each time. The end sealing on each Fuji wrapper is the highly engineered box-motion end seal. The film at Ellume is thick and difficult to seal at higher speed for most flow wrap- pers, but with Fuji’s gearing and end-seals a hermetic seal is created every time,” Waters said.
The roll-out and safe delivery of securely packaged Ellume COVID-19 Home Test kits in the US has com- menced, a testament to Australian innovation and ingenuity on the part of both the product developers and the manufacturing suppliers. ■
started the conversation around how we were going to acquire, install and commission the Fuji wrappers to allow Ellume to export their product out to the US in time to meet their own deadlines,” Waters related.
By using the ‘Fuji Family’ of world- wide distributors, JL Lennard was able to source several machines from dis- tributors and have them modified to ensure they could handle and wrap each product correctly. Local inkjet company National Coding Technologies was engaged to supply thermal inkjet printers for each Fuji wrapper for print- ing the expiry and batch codes.
“The main challenge was running at higher speeds using Ellume’s exist- ing film, a composite foil laminate, as it is very thick and difficult to seal, however, due to Fuji’s technology (induction centre sealing) we were able to reach these speeds without damaging the film and give Ellume its hermetically sealed product,” he said.
ABOVE: Developed in Australia, the Ellume COVID-19 Home Test is an over-the-counter, rapid self-test which detects SARS-CoV-2 antigens.