Rapak designed the Intasept sterile aseptic technology for bioprocess containers that are used in large-scale production of drugs and biologics. The principle behind it is that bioprocessors are equipped with a 16mm Intasept filling port, with laminated barrier membranes, sold in conjunction with the filling machine. It is the membranes that allow sterilisation and resealing without removing the bag from the filling head.
Mediatech promises that the filling cycle is entirely unexposed to contamination and says that there are cost savings to be made if using its filling technology.
The company claims that the cost goes down a minimum of 30% when compared to the cost of using conventional manifold technologies. And they claim that the cost savings are related to raw material and labour costs, as the bags no longer have to be filled manually.
They compared the Intasept filling system, which measures the product into individual bags, to the traditional manifold filling system, which has multiple bags connected, filled and sealed individually. The system will fill bags at 2 liters per second flow rates, while manifold fill rates are at least 10 times slower, according to Mediatech.
"The success rate is exceptional and we can easily dispense a 6000 litre run into 20 litre bags in approximately 4.5 hours," John Elliott, executive vice president of Mediatech and Chris Rutter, product development director for Rapak, told US-PharmaTechnologist.com.
The fill technology system allows customers to use bags ranging from one litre up to 200 litre bags.
Mediatech was familiar with the Intasept system as they have used the technology to package sterile liquids into containers for over 20 years, thus decided to enter an exclusive marketing deal with Rapak.