PRESS RELEASE 10 March 2008

RENTING TABLET AND CAPSULE WEIGHT SORTERS QUICKLY PAY FOR THEMSELVES.

CI Electronics offers an equipment rental service aimed at pharmaceutical companies with short-term or high-priority sorting needs. Batches of tablets or capsules, rejected on a weight sampling test, often contain a high percentage of weight acceptable product. With the SADE SP rental service, this valuable product can be reclaimed proving to be a rapid, efficient and cost-effective solution for many companies.

In late 2006, Bristol-Myers Squibb's Meymac tablet production facility rented two SADE sorters and a licence for the WinSort statistical analysis software package. The company needed to sort small batches of tablets. Most of the product was salvaged by running the batches through the weight sorters.

Jeremy Lerouyer, project manager at Bristol-Myers Squibb, comments:

"The cost of renting the sorters was small compared with the cost of scrapping the batches. It was therefore a big benefit to us to rent the weight sorters and having the software available meant we could study the variability of the weights. The weight sorters and software were easy to use, and the service we received from CI Electronics was excellent."

Another company that has made good use of the rental service is Banner Pharmacaps Europe. This company specialises in softgel capsules and has made use of the CI rental service on a number of occasions, the most recent being a four-week period in early 2007 when it was discovered that a number of batches of pharmaceutical and dietary supplement softgel products had been incompletely filled. However, because of the coating on the softgel capsules, it was not possible to use visual inspection techniques to sort the fully filled capsules from the partially filled capsules. Having used a SADE SP200 weight sorter before, Banner was able to install the unit without assistance from CI. It was then run with the suspect softgel batches, often operating continuously for 24 hours or more. The alternative would have been to reject the batches and accept the associated financial loss.

Nico Castelijn, the maintenance and engineering manager at Banner's plant at Tilburg, in the Netherlands, says:

"The SADE SP200 is an excellent weight sorter and I would like to buy one. However, for the moment it is more cost-effective to rent one when we need it, as we know the service from CI Electronics and the local agent in Belgium will be excellent, and we do not have an ongoing need to weigh sort production batches."

Both SADE SP200 and SADE SP100 models are available and can be delivered in a matter of days, with an experienced CI engineer provided to install the units and train the operators. The rental service is provided in accordance with guidelines set down by regulatory bodies and adheres to strict procedures concerning clean-down.

Contact CI Electronics to request more information about the SADE SP200 capsule/tablet weight sorter by telephoning telephone +44 (0) 1722 424100, faxing +44 (0)1722 323222 or e-mail sales@cielec.com

www.cielec.com/sorting.html.