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Bee Health – Nutritional Supplements

Bee Health

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Established in 1992, Bee Health is one of the UK’s leading vitamin, mineral and supplement manufacturers. The company produces 400 million capsules and tablets a week at its 80,000 sq. ft. state of the art facility for customers in over 40 countries.

INW Bee Health utilises vertical polishing machines to remove excess powder substrate from the outer surface of filled capsules on all their  capsule filling lines. The machine uses a rotating soft drum brush within a perforated inner cylinder that has a helical rail. Filled capsules enter the inner cylinder at the base and the rotating brushes gently move and agitate the capsules against the sidewall of the inner cylinder, moving them upward using the helical rail. An outer closed cylinder provides a vacuum supply to carry away the excess powder and the now polished and cleaned capsules exit at  the top of the machine.

Result

The components were designed and delivered in under 15 days.

Since installation there has been no further marking of the outside of the capsules.

Why choose AddParts?

Through the use of our design and production services, supported by our quality management procedures, AddParts is able to duplicate critical components, digitally repair them and prepare them for manufacture using our
in-house production facilities. This can be done either by sending the parts to AddParts for reverse engineering, or in the case of critical parts which cannot be removed from the machine, duplication can be carried out on-site.

What was the problem?

The existing machine set-up uses predominantly stainless-steel components. However, this set-up was causing marks on the white magnesium capsules. Bee Health had decided to look at alternatives and had sought to order a replacement from the OEM. However, the lead time from the OEM was up to 3 months and despite the lengthy wait and significant cost ran the risk of similar issues.

What did we do?

The AddParts team visited the site and after a quick look at the machine, the available spare parts were 3D scanned on-site.

Bee Health were assigned a virtual store room and secure login details were provided to key team members. Once the data was uploaded to the storeroom, with pricing and material specifications, the AddParts team got to work on converting the scan data to production data.

The final set of components were manufactured in a range of materials depending on their proximity to the capsules, including AddParts’ FDA-approved food contact nylon material as well as weight-bearing components
manufactured in carbon fibre reinforced nylon. Some components were hybrid components utilising the material properties of each material where they are most effective.

The replacement parts required a small number of design changes to accommodate the chosen production materials and processes but once these were completed and signed off, the components were produced and supplied, with all
the necessary material regulatory information and certificates of conformity that Bee Health required for their high standards of production hygiene.

Testimonial

AddParts is an innovative service which is a great fit for us. The team responded quickly and really understood that downtime costs us business. The fact that we can build our own store of parts we know we can get at short notice, without actually taking up space here is a game-changer for us and the more we use AddParts, the more value we see in what it brings for us.

Kristian Chaperlin,
Encap Assistant Manager,
INW Bee Health