Fluid-Bag improves toothpaste manufacturing efficiency

With Fluid-Bag less toothpaste is left in the production tank 

For many of us it’s almost like a sport to press the last gram of toothpaste from the inside of a tube before it can be thrown in the plastic recycling bin. As any plant manager in the industry knows, in everyday toothpaste production there’s the same challenge. Recently a new storage and repacking system with Fluid-Bag’s equipment was opened in Europe’s biggest toothpaste factory. The results have been convincing.

To better serve the market and improve the resource efficiency, the toothpaste factory recently upgraded the production unit with equipment from Fluid-Bag. The factory has around 600 employees and is the largest producer of toothpaste in Europe.

Discussions with representatives of Fluid-Bag were held about how the packaging and discharging system could help to reduce bottlenecks, minimize residue, and raise the level of efficiency in the factory even more, while at the same time maintaining the integrity and quality of sensitive products. In 2019 the decision was made to invest in an automatic system from Fluid-Bag. 

Fluid-Bag bulk toothpaste containers and equipment

Fluid-Bag had developed a storage and repacking system for toothpaste using the company’s vast experience and best practises from the cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries. After meticulous tests the system from Fluid-Bag, which included the Fluid-Bag Multi and the Automatic Discharge Roller, was implemented in the factory.

The Fluid-Bag equipment works together with a Waukesha Cherry-Burrell U2 060 pump for discharge. This combination is an excellent set-up because the process is fully automized and allows for lots of flexibility during production, whereas minimal residue results are achieved.

Moreover, in case of very sensitive products, as it is a closed-system, Fluid-Bag guarantees a totally safe process.

The Fluid-Bag system is perfect for microbiologically sensitive products, like toothpaste, and it does not shorten the lifetime of the product. It keeps the product safe and eliminates the risk of lost production volumes.

All together the Fluid-Bag system generates significant savings in the process.

Flexibility and efficiency are crucial in toothpaste manufacturing

We can all relate to the difficulty in efficiently discharging toothpaste from large metal tanks. “On an industrial level the amounts of residue toothpaste are proportionally very high in steel tanks, up to 30–40 kilos. In the Fluid-Bag system the residue is around 1 per cent”, says Maciej Piotrowicz, Sales Coordinator for Fluid-Bag in Poland and CEE.

The automatic discharge roller enables automation of the discharging process, so the operator’s role is minimized, and it also allows integration with the MES (manufacturing execution system). “Despite the different interfaces, the Fluid-Bag system could easily be integrated with the other systems in the factory”.

Although the approximately same amount of toothpaste is used by consumers every day, the market demand can fluctuate from one month to another, due to marketing campaigns and retail strategies. Therefore, flexibility in production is crucial.

“The Fluid-Bag system offers production flexibility in many ways. Sometimes you need smaller or larger batches of a certain product. With Fluid-Bag, the manufacturer can avoid storage in large 10 m³ tanks.

Nowadays what matters most is to achieve flexibility in the production process, which in turn results in increased ability of small batch production, within reasonable operational costs.”, Maciej Piotrowicz concludes. 

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