Cream

Cream belongs to the liquid and paste family, but it behaves like neither a free-flowing liquid nor a solid. Cosmetic and pharmaceutical creams demand hygienic filling and exact dosing in the same machine. The emulsion is thick enough to hold its shape and soft enough to smear: a thread of product drawn out of the nozzle and laid across the sealing area leaves a weak seal that opens later in the carton. Emulsions also take up air easily, and an aerated dose is a light dose even when the pack looks full. Because a cream line rarely runs one formulation for long, carryover between batches constrains the machine as much as the product. Piston fillers with shut-off nozzles handle high viscosity without aeration. A servo-driven piston draws a measured volume from the hopper and pushes it through the nozzle as a closed column, so the dose is displaced rather than poured and no air is folded into the emulsion. At the end of the stroke the shut-off nozzle closes against the product and cuts it cleanly, keeping the sealing area free of the smear thick creams otherwise leave behind. Nozzle diameter, piston size and the seals along the product path are matched to the formulation, and GMP-oriented design allows thorough cleaning between batches. The pack format follows the way the cream is used. Stick pack is the single-dose format for skincare and dermatology: one application, nothing left in an opened container, and a shape that travels in a pocket or a sample envelope. Sachet covers everything from sample size to daily-dose formats and stands behind press inserts, pharmacy sampling, hotel amenities and clinical distribution, where a flat pack is easier to store, code and hand over than a jar. Dosing runs from 1 to 15 g per pack. Output is not a single figure: these are multi-lane machines and the number of lanes depends on pack width, so a narrow pack allows more lanes across the same web and a wide pack fewer. On a cream stick pack machine such as MSM1200, twelve lanes on a narrow pack give up to 960 packs per minute, while the same machine on a wider pack runs six lanes and up to 480 packs per minute. Mentpack builds cream sachet packaging machines across the range: ARTISTICK with 1 to 5 lanes, HSM with 1 to 3, ISM400 with 2 to 5, ISM600 with 3 to 7, MSM800 with 4 to 10, MSM1200 with 6 to 12, SPM320 with 1 to 8, SPM800 with 4 to 12 and SPM1200 with 7 to 12. The choice follows pack width, dose and required output. Typical users are skincare brands and their contract manufacturers, dermatology lines, pharmaceutical companies packing topical preparations, hotel amenity suppliers and clinics handing out single applications — wherever the dose has to be repeatable and the pack has to stay closed until the user opens it.