Owing to the pharmaceuticals industry requiring gentle pumping solutions, pumps solutions supplier Verder Pumps South Africa emphasises the importance of the standard peristaltic pump for the pharmaceuticals industry.

The company distributes pumps manufacturer Verderflex’s Vantage 3000 and Vantage 5000 ranges of standard peristaltic tube pumps that offer precision pumping and dispensing solutions for the pharmaceuticals industry.

Verder Pumps South Africa (SA) marketing manager Elaine van der Westhuizen notes that these pumps also meet the stringent hygienic requirement of the industry in that they have specialised casing to avoid leaks and cross contamination.

“Our pumps solve all the challenges that come with high or low viscosity, shear sensitivity liquids and abrasive fluids.”

The pumps are versatile, automatic units with sophisticated dosing programmes, she points out.

The applications are ideal for small-scale production and can be remotely controlled by external sensors for feedback control.

The Verderflex dosing pumps have a quick tube changeover, which is useful when dispensing a range of different chemicals or dosing different batch sizes.

The pumps’ casings meet the Ingress Protection 66 standard, which makes them ideal for high-pressure wash-down environments.

In aseptic pumping conditions, the peristaltic pumps are also ideal, as the sterilisable tube is the only contact part. The pumps minimise process validation needs, and ensure total containment of fluids and the isolation of active cultures.

Verder Pumps SA launched the Verderflex Vantage 5000 in South Africa at the Electra Mining expo last year.

The pump was designed and tested in the UK and was only launched in South Africa after successful completion and market interest. The pump will be on display again at the Verder stand at the Lab Africa pharmaceuticals show in August this year.

This pump has touch-screen technology and an intuitive operating system, which is easy to operate and offers a user-friendly operator’s menu structure with visible colour-coded on-screen status alerts and alarm indicators.

The Vantage 3000 is a smaller unit and, therefore, smaller flow rates are obtainable, notes Van der Westhuizen.

Verderflex recently installed a Vantage 3000 dispensing tube pump at Alliance Technical Laboratories (ATL) in Suffolk, England.

At ATL, hygienic bags are filled with a sterile media for meat and other food packaging. The company regularly has to accurately dispense chemicals and other fluids. Previously, this was a labour-intensive manual task and prone to human error.

This pump has no external moving parts that can clog or wear, which means maintenance time is minimal.

The Verderflex Vantage 3000 pumps operate by gently squeezing the tube between the outer casing and a roller; as these rollers rotate, they expel the liquid from the tube into the pump’s discharge side.

On the suction or inlet side, the tube’s restitution creates a priming vacuum to refill the tubing. This simple pumping mechanism provides repeatable dose flows of up to 1 310 /min, eliminating the need to weigh or measure every dose of fluid before it is added to the bag.

ATL chose the compact Vantage 3000 pump because it easily fits onto a bench and works with a foot switch to simplify the dosing process.

Liquid Solutions
Verder Pumps SA is part of the Verder Group, comprising Verder Liquids and Verder Scientific, specialising in products and services for fluid handling and laboratories respectively.

The Verder Liquids division comprises in-house Verder Pumps, systems and services distributed by local Verder suppliers.

Manufacturing in-house enables the Verder Group to maintain the highest standards over the design, build and testing procedures, which reduces risk and costs to the customer.

“Verder Pumps SA offers the best cleaning and self-draining capability across its range of pumping solutions products,” Van der Westhuizen concludes.