Bulk Handling Personal Care Products

In the personal care products industry, product waste can account for a great deal of lost monetary potential. Accurately weighing expensive material becomes a critical advantage when manufacturing anything from toothpaste to lotion to eyeliner or hand soap. The right selection of equipment and systems can aid a personal care product manufacturer when tackling these and other facility-related concerns.

Common Challenges

Accurate weighing of minor ingredients

Accuracy is of paramount importance when weighing micro and minor ingredients. While it’s understood that larger batches conveyed into a hopper will result in less accurate readings, separate smaller containers and smaller hoppers are used to weigh product with greater precision. With less stainless steel associated with these hoppers, maintaining accuracy while meeting requirements becomes easily achievable.

Handling non-free flowing ingredients

It can prove difficult to handle non-free flowing ingredients in the personal care product industry. This challenge must be taken into consideration when considering methods of material conditioning.

High thresholds for system cleaning

Manufacturing personal care products mean that contamination risks affect not just the product itself, but potentially consumers as well. Whether dosing or weighing, those in the industry must properly assess processes for contamination risks. These risks will differ from ingredient to ingredient, but incorporating a system that can be quickly cleaned can aid the repeatability of processes.

Color additives for cosmetic products

In the case of certain cosmetic products, color additives may be required for specific products. Understanding how to properly handle these additives proves to be a challenge for some plants and facilities.

Operator Injuries

Injuries are a concern across any and all manufacturing industries. Workers’ compensation insurance claims introduce huge liabilities. Direct costs that follow injuries can include compliance penalties. Risks associated with injuries can be greatly minimized by fully automating certain processes.

Determining height limitations that influence system design

Different configurations can be made based on the height of a PVC manufacturer’s facility. Many possibilities are available for plants with capacity for a hundred-foot tower.

From AZO specifically, multiple linear AZO COMPONENTERs can be installed in a plant with these towers. Product can then be weighed and dropped into the mixer from a higher-end system. Docked bag dump stations that drop down and are accessed by an elevator can also be installed in these types of facilities.

Still, quality systems with bag dumps and COMPONENTER machines can also be designed when these manufacturers don’t have as much height in their facility. Knowing height limitations early on will help us, the equipment manufacturer, design an effective system for a PVC plant.

Outcomes & Benefits

A partner like AZO is made up of employees driven to discover solutions for our clients. One of the first steps we take for a partner in the personal care product industry is to determine which materials are the “high runners” that compose most of a particular batch. We not only can automate these for a personal care product, but automate the minor and micro and ingredients utilized within the manufacturing of a personal care product as well. We provide exceptional service in tandem with sophisticated handling systems that can:

Easily be cleaned to encourage quick batch changes
Store bulk materials
Discharge and distribute bulk materials
Collect and weigh additives with gram accuracy
Sift unwanted foreign material out of the process

Equipment & Engineering Solutions

AZO solutions are individually fit to our customer’s requirements and optimized for the most economical and flexible results. Specifically, our COMPONENTER systems handle minor and micro ingredients with proficiency, as do our innovative Ro-Log systems. These robotic “arms” transport ingredients from individual vessels and places them in systems that then dose the material. The only caveat for the RoLog is that you have to have fairly free-flowing products.

With direction and assistance from AZO, your personal care process can seamlessly work together to accurately handle and weigh wide varieties of material: