Recent Headlines:

• Surefil Passes Silliker® Audit

• Surefil Adds Advanced SureClean™ System

• Surefil Adds New Compounding Capacity

• Surefil Expands Facilities, Receives Approval on City of Kentwood Tax Abatement

• Surefil Revolutionizes Contract Manufacturing

  with Introduction of SureScrap™

• Surefil to Add High-Speed Packaging Line for 2007

Surefil Passes Siliker® Audit

(Grand Rapids, Mich.) – Surefil LLC, a contract manufacturer of liquid-fill products for the personal care, home care, and medical industries, recently passed a Silliker Audit with a score of 96.7%. Surefil requested the audit as a means for continuous improvement.

"Our goal is to be the best manufacturer of liquid-fill products including personal care, home care, and medical products," says Surefil CEO Bill Hunt.  "Audits like the Silliker Audit are an excellent tool for self-evaluation as we continue to move toward that goal." Hunt indicated that having and independent audit firm such as Silliker perform an audit is also a demonstration of Surefil's commitment to industry standards for current Good Manufacturing Practices and Good Laboratory Practices. It also provides Surefil's customers another level of confidence in the quality of its services.

The audit evaluates manufacturers on categories including their quality systems, employee practices, receiving, storage and shipping, plant hygienics, manufacturing, building and equipment, grounds and even pest control. The auditor remarked, "This is the highest score I have given a new facility on the first audit - Surefil is an impressive operation."

Surefil's recent expansion has given ample capacity to take on new customers. Contact us at 616-532-1700 to determine how we can meet your filling needs.

Surefil Adds Advanced SureClean™ System

(Grand Rapids, Mich.) – Surefil LLC, a fast-growing contract manufacturer for the personal care and medical industries, has emerged as one of the top producers of shampoos and conditioners in the U.S. market. To maintain its position in the industry, Surefil has designed and constructed an advanced clean-in-place (CIP) system, called SureClean™, to ensure the proper manufacture of personal care and over-the-counter products.

"In creating the SureClean™ system, we analyzed and benchmarked companies in the food and pharmaceutical industries so that we would exceed the rigorous standards of our industry," says Surefil CEO Bill Hunt. "Early in the process, it became apparent that Surefil needed a mix of hardware and controls to make the system clean both rapidly and effectively."

The new SureClean™ system cleans, rinses and sanitizes all of Surefil's mix and compounding vessels, process piping, hold tanks and fillers. Hot water - now pressurized by Surefil - rinses the system, while chemicals sanitize it. By Surefil's standard, all equipment must be used within four hours or it must undergo the sanitization process again.

SureClean™ is augmented with a new clean-out-of-place system purchased from Sanamatic Corp. The semi-automated system ensures effective cleaning and sanitization of manufacturing parts such as tri-clover fittings, strainers, filter housings, gaskets and other items used in the manufacturing process.

Surefil Adds New Compounding Capacity to Meet Market Needs

(Grand Rapids, Mich.) – Surefil LLC, a fast-growing contract manufacturer for the personal care and medical industries, has added more than 12,000 gallons of capacity to its high-quality, hygienic compounding facility. The new capacity meets all of Surefil's rigorous quality standards including 316 stainless steel, center and sweep wall agitation, sanitary valves and process piping, new pumps with variable speed control and cone bottom vessels for efficient use of materials.

Surefil also custom developed a new controls system for the expanded facility. Each mix vessel features full load cell capability, controlled addition of selected raw materials, automated additions of USP 29 purified water and automated clean-in-place capability. The new facility has increased product batch repeatability and consistency, reducing both batch production times and scrap. "In essence, we've designed our expanded compounding facility for highly-controlled manufacturing of all products, from mouthwash to shampoos and conditioners to sunscreen," says Surefil CEO Bill Hunt.

The addition of two raw materials tanks has also increased Surefil's storage capabilities, and a new raw materials handling system has significantly reduced raw material costs and processing times. An automated dispense system interfaces with process controls to deliver a specified amount of bulk raw materials to the new and existing manufacturing tanks. The company can quickly add new tanks to scale up production as needed. "Our growth at Surefil has been even more rapid than we could have anticipated, allowing us to continually update and improve our facilities," says Hunt. "As a result, Surefil customers will benefit from our economical, state-of-the-art manufacturing systems."

Surefil Expands Facilities, Receives Approval on City of Kentwood Tax Abatement

(Grand Rapids, Mich.) – Surefil LLC, a contract manufacturer for the personal care and medical industries, announces the addition of a 50,000 square foot extension to its manufacturing facilities.  The company broke ground on the lot adjacent to its world headquarters after the City of Kentwood approved a tax abatement for Surefil.

"Since establishing our world headquarters less than one year ago, Surefil has grown rapidly," says Surefil CEO Bill Hunt.  "While we have always planned for an expansion, we are happy to announce that rising customer demand prompted us to break ground even earlier than anticipated."

Hunt says that the expansion will be completed by the end of February.  In addition to meeting the needs of Surefil's growing clientele, the expansion will support the addition of a new filling and packaging line being installed at Surefil.  The new line is one of the most advanced lines to be installed in the U.S. contract packaging industry and will add an additional 85 million units to Surefil's current capacity.

To support the expansion, Surefil applied for a tax abatement from the City of Kentwood.  Surefil completed the first step in receiving the tax abatement when the city commissioners approved the establishment of an industrial development district on Dec. 5.  Surefil received final approval on the tax abatement during the Jan. 2 hearing when city commissioners voted to approve an industrial facilities exemption certificate for the company.

Surefil Revolutionizes Contract Manufacturing with Introduction of SureScrap™

(Grand Rapids, Mich.) – Surefil LLC, a contract manufacturer for the personal care and medical industries, has introduced SureScrap™, a new, advanced program for major brand customers.  SureScrap™ is a premium service for customers who are focused on driving down material costs and maintaining tighter control of their supply chain.  The program is a comprehensive approach to leveraging new plant design, sophisticated equipment, information systems and operating philosophy.

To integrate SureScrap™, Surefil designed its new plant with lean manufacturing in mind, minimizing the distances between compounding, holding and filling.  All of the plant’s new piping systems utilize minimal pipe diameter while maintaining capability for high volume flow.  Each pipe operates on a slope and the SurePig™ pigging system ensures minimum product is left in the transfer piping.  The SurePig™ system consists of a flexible “pig” that is launched through the transfer pipe.  The pig pushes all of the product in the pipe to a receiving vessel, which allows the capture of the product.  The pig is then launched back to its starting point.  “We look at every possible means for reducing scrap,” says Doug Anderson, Surefil’s Chief Engineer.  “Our operation of the pigging system allows capture of at least an additional 1 percent of product.”

Surefil also uses the SureStick™ adhesive system to reduce packaging scrap.  The adhesive system allows for rapid label stripping on any misplaced or bubbled labels and facilitates high-quality re-labels.  With SureStick™ a label can be stripped off for up to six hours after labeling, saving the bottle, cap and product while achieving a first quality product.

Operational strategy initiatives include the enforcement of a strict quarantine of all incoming materials to ensure no material enters the “available for production status” in the warehouse.  This quarantine dramatically reduces scrap in the packaging area.

The plant is also equipped with an impressive water purification system.  The system softens city water, filters the water using carbon, and incorporates both a GE Osmonics reverse osmosis system and a Surefil-designed Electrolytic Deionization (EDI) system.  Finally, the system has ultraviolet purification and subsequent micron filtering.  The USP Grade 29 is virtually a pure H2O molecule.  In-line Total Organic Carbon (TOC) and conductivity meters ensure the reliability of the system.  Starting with this highly-purified water ensures virtually flawless product compounding.

The 316 stainless steel compounding tanks are all equipped with SureSweep™ sweep cone system and sweep wall agitation, a rotating shaft with “arms” that reach out and hold Teflon scrapers against the wall.  This design improves mixing and heat transfer.  It also ensures that the mix tank is essentially scraped clean when the batch is transferred.  This is a Surefil standard.

SureScrap™, SurePig™, SureStick™ and SureSweep™ are Registered Trademarks of Surefil LLC.

Surefil to Add High-Speed Packaging Line for 2007

New Line is One of the Most Advanced in the U.S.

Grand Rapids, Mich. -Surefil LLC, a fast-growing contract manufacturer in the personal care and medical industries, announces its plans to add a new, high-speed packaging line to its facilities for 2007. The new line is one of the most advanced lines to be installed in the U.S. contract packaging industry.

The installation of the new Surefil packaging line will mark an increase in capacity for potential brand partners.  It will add an additional 85 million units to Surefil's current capacity.  The line is the first of three new packaging lines expected to be installed at Surefil over the next 24 months.  "Surefil's new capacity will offer a tremendous benefit to the marketplace," says Surefil CEO Bill Hunt.  "For example, if a new product is selling surprisingly well, but a major brand company does not have the manufacturing capacity to produce more, Surefil does have the manufacturing capacity to meet that demand, and it's available for immediate scale up."

The new line features a bottle unscrambler and a servo-driven labeler for orienting bottles, an ideal feature for precise label and cap placement.  Surefil has also selected a servo-driven filler with 28 fill heads, 12 cap heads and a filling speed of 280 bottles per minute.  Equipment for bottle coding and case erecting, packaging and sealing completes Surefil's new, state-of-the-art packaging line.  Surefil engineers also hope to add robotic palletizing to the new line, and are in the final evaluation stage of the technology. 

"The equipment on Surefil's new line is ideal for liquid filling in the personal care and medical industries," says Hunt.  "It was designed to exceed equipment cleaning and sanitary standards for Surefil's ideal customer."  The sanitary design eliminates the potential for contamination of personal care and medical products, and features 316 stainless steel in all product contact areas.

Surefil's new packaging line is fully validated and meets the company's exacting standard for accurate filling of .2%.  The procedures and operations of this line allow Surefil to manufacture identical lots batch after batch. Surefil can also meet stringent customer requirements through their process validation system.