Flora Nutritional Supplements Articles & Resources

Until this year, all Jarrow Formulas products had been co-manufactured; the probiotics, a mainstay of the product line, still are. But Jarrow Industries has taken over the manufacturing and packaging of almost all other Jarrow Formula products.

And the new company does a lot more. Jarrow-brand products make up no more than 30% of its production, with the rest consisting of private-label and co-manufactured products.

Landing so many co-pack customers so quickly was largely a matter of versatility, Hari says. There's a lot of competition in private-label supplement and drug manufacturing, but much of it centers on just one kind of product or package.

Drug and supplement manufacturing "is undersupplied in terms of quality facilities," Hari says. "There are lots of facilities on the market, but most of them cater to a specific product or specific packaging. To have it all under one roof--the raw materials, screening, blending, capsules and tablets manufacturing, and then packaging--there aren't many facilities that provide that kind of one-stop service."

Shell building

That roof, and the walls under it, was a crucial starting point. Jarrow Industries moved into a brand-new industrial park, developed by Trammel Crow Co., that was designed as a series of "shell buildings"--bare-bones structures easily adaptable to the requirements of any manufacturer.

With the help of architectural and engineering firm Advanced Plant Engineering, Hari, along with operations manager Eiger Bjornstad, began designing the plant. Specifications included stringent temperature and humidity control; strategically located mezzanines for product loading; capacities for centralized pneumatic conveying and dust collection; and a modular structure that isolates each step in processing and packaging.

The result is a 45,000-square-foot facility that has the capacity to produce and package over-the-counter (OTC) drugs as well as supplements. It can package pills and capsules in blisters (see "Blisters supplement Jarrow's supplements" on page 40) as well as the bottles that are far more common for nutritional supplements.

In specifying packaging machinery, Jarrow personnel kept in mind the goals of versatility, quality and regulatory compliance--both for supplements and for pharmaceuticals, which have far more stringent standards enforced by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

"When we initiated this process, the intent was to improve the standards and the quality of private-label manufacturing and packaging," Hari says. "And also, we had in mind that we could provide not only vitamins and nutritional supplements, but some over-the-counter medicine manufacturing and packaging as well. That was the intent in designing the facility."

The regulatory environment for supplements has become more strict, and that affects packaging as well as production.

"Even in the packaging area, the FDA has regulations on packing materials, labeling, stability and the interactions between the active ingredients and the packaging materials," Hari says. "And also the information that goes along with it."

Modular rooms

Jarrow's manufacturing and packaging operations are broken down into separate rooms, which makes it easier to maintain high sanitation standards and reduces the danger of cross-contamination. The automated bottling area is the largest module, a U-shaped line that comprises everything from bottle orienting to automatic case sealing. The line was designed by NJM/CLI Packaging Systems International, which also furnished several components. The area also has some tabletop fillers and labelers for small, custom orders.

Bottles are unscrambled, cleaned by an air jet and placed in single file by a Unisort 250 from Pace Packaging. A PillowPak desiccant packet from Desiccare Inc. is dropped into the bottom of the bottle by an Azco Corp. inserter.

The bottles are filled by a dual head counter from Cremer Special machines BV, which can run up to 120 bottles per minute. Vibratory grooved plates and cones, which are changed out for different-sized product, feed the capsules into the counting section. The Cremer machine counts a bottle's worth of pills into both the hopper directly feeding the bottles and another elevator-controlled hopper above, ensuring a continuous feed.

The Cremer machine is designed for fast changeover. An onboard Pentium-based PC contains a database of product specs; servomotors move the gates, fill hoppers and other components into position for each product. The PC also stores statistics on line speed, interruptions, missed capsules and other parameters.

A cottoning machine from NJM/CLI handles a continuous strand of rayon with a gripping piston, twisting off segments. The segments are deposited in one of a pair of tubes, which then rotate 180 degrees to a position over an open bottle. A plunger descends, pushing the cotton through the tube into the bottle. Like every other major piece of equipment on the bottling line, the cottoner has a reject station, with a camera that looks for missing or overhanging wads.

"Having all these automatic rejects is what allows us to run as fast as we do with as few people as we do," Bjornstad says. The line ordinarily runs with about four operators.

Capping is done by a four-spindle in-line NJM/CLI Unicap 150 that tightens the caps with counter-rotating disks after they're fed onto the bottles. An Enercon induction sealer affixes the inner seals with pulses of electromagnetic energy. These lift-and-peel seals, furnished by Berlin Packaging, include half-moon tabs for easier removal.

In labeling, Jarrow is transitioning from cut paper labels to roll-fed pressure-sensitive ones, supplied by Impaxx. The hot glue needed to apply the cut labels was time-consuming, messy and prone to burn, Bjornstad says. The roll-fed labeler, an NJM/CLI Uni 300S, is much faster and more dependable.

Even so, bottle filling often outstrips the ability of the labeler, at 2,000 labels per roll, to keep up. An accumulation table from NJM/CLI upstream, which holds about five minutes' worth of bottles, is crucial to maintaining the bottle flow. An experienced operator can put a fresh roll of labels in place in about one minute.

Cases are hand-packed, then taped on a Belcor Industries Bel 252 case sealer. A print-and-apply system from Zebra Technologies puts a corner-wrap label with identifying information on each case.

Jarrow has taken full advantage of the opportunity that comes with designing a facility from the ground up.

"That's the excitement of designing a new facility," Hari says. "You can bring all the elements under one roof, so you can provide a full spectrum of services."

STATS AT A GLANCE

 Company: Jarrow Industries, Inc.
 Location: Santa Fe Springs, Calif.
 Plant Size: 45,000 square feet
 Operation: Two shifts, five days a week
 Products: Vitamins and dietary
 supplements
Current Output: 250,000 bottles packed/
 month; 250,000 blister
 cards packed/month;
 10 million capsules
 manufactured/month.
 Packages: Plastic and glass bottles,
 blister cards
 Outlets: Health stores, drugstores;
 Jarrow Formulas brand
 and private label

RELATED ARTICLE: Blisters supplement Jarrow's supplements.

Jarrow Industries is one of the few producers of nutritional supplements to use blister packs. They provide the same benefits for supplements as for over-the-counter medicine: enhanced appearance, portability, stability and protection from oxygen, heat and moisture.

This protection is especially important for probiotics, whose living organisms are vulnerable to environmental damage. Probiotics are packaged In polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and aluminum toll. Jarrow is looking into polyvinylidene chloride (PVdC), which provides a superior barrier to PVC but is about three times more expensive. The company must determine whether the resulting increase in shelf life would overcome the increased cost. Bjornstad says.

The other Jarrow product packaged in blisters is SAM-e (S-adenosyl L-methionine), used to maintain joint and liver health and alleviate anxiety. SAM-e is in double-aluminum blisters, primarily because its ionic salts are highly sensitive to moisture.

Jarrow's blister packaging system is a Bosch TLT 1200, with a capacity of 50 to 100 cards per minute. It sits in a room that can be converted into a class 100,000 cleanroom, with up to 20 air changes an hour. The Bosch machine can fill either one or two cards per stroke, depending on card size. It also features a visual inspection system that diverts cards with missing or damaged capsules into a reject bin.

Jarrow ran into a problem with blister packaging of its probiotic capsules. The capsules, which are made for Jarrow by Canadian producer Institut Rosell/Lallemand, contain living bacteria that supplement the natural flora of the intestine. To ensure that these bacteria reach the intestine without being destroyed by stomach acid the capsules are covered with an enteric coating. The problem is that this sturdy coating makes the capsules rough-too rough to be handled by the tubes that would ordinarily feed capsules into the cavities of the blister packer.

To solve the immediate problem, operations manager Eiger Bjornstad started using the Bosch machine's "brush box." This attachment comprises a series of counter-rotating spiral brushes, bracketed by a pair of motors, that deposit the capsules reliably into the cavities. The brush box ordinarily is used for tablets. because most capsules are too fragile for the brushes. But the enteric coating that makes the capsules unsuitable for tube depositing allows them--mostly--to stand up to the brushes. For a longer-term solution. Jarrow is working with both Institut Rosell and Bosch to find a way to allow enteric-coated capsules to be handled by tubes.

For more Information

Azco Corp.
973-439-1426, .com

Belcor Industries
604-270-0811; .com

Berlin Packaging
800-723-7546;
.com

Bosch Packaging Technology
763-493-6159;
.com

Cremer North America
450-629-2229; .com

Desiccare Inc.
800-446-6650; .com

Enercon Industries Corp.
262-255-6070; .com

Impaxx Inc.
323-267-4900; .com

NJM/CLI Packaging
Systems International
800-432-2990; .com

PDC International Corp.
203-853-1516; .com

Zebra Technologies
847-634-6700; .com
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