Aspen Pharmacare, based in East London has been a long-standing customer of Anderson Engineering. Anderson have supplied four state of the art Pharmaceutical Processing plants to Aspen, three of which are for manufacturing liquids and one for creams & ointments.

One of the liquids processing plants was installed in 2012 and over the years we have made continuous improvements together with the Aspen team. In 2015 Aspen ventured into manufacturing of Borstol Cough Syrup. This was originally produced by GSK in Cape Town.

Together with the Aspen team, we brainstormed the addition of a 30 000l bulk storage tank for Arachis Oil, which is one of the main primary ingredients used for Borstol. Modifications were required to the existing plant to allow for this additional supply. We developed the concept and provided a quotation and two years later the project was approved.

The project

The scope of work was to supply a 30 000l bulk storage tank with a supply line to the 2 x 5000l manufacturing processing tanks. A swing bend panel was introduced for tanker offloading. The tank was fitted with level control as well as safety interventions to prevent an overfill scenario. The supply line was piped underground then into the ceiling void and was then linked to an existing ingredient supply line which used an E&H Coriolis Mass Flow Meter to meter in the various bulk supply.

Anderson Engineering provided the full turnkey solution which included the supply of all documentation (IQ, OQ, SOP etc). The challenge faced with this installation was the introduction of oil to the system. We had to ensure CIP was effective and this required several modifications to the CIP. We introduced “leak” proof valve technology to this system but this was later removed and replaced with the more convenient swing bend panel. Together with the Aspen team, Anderson conducted numerous product trials at commissioning which proved to be successful.  The project took approximately 5 months to complete.