If you’ve ever bought skincare, cleaning products, milk, or even nut butter, you’ve likely encountered some sort of seal. It’s not just protecting the contents from spilling out, but preventing external elements from getting in. While it might seem like a flimsy piece of film or plastic, that seal is working really hard.
For liquid-based goods, like medicines, any change in property can be disastrous. Oxidation, contamination, you name it: without an airtight seal to keep the right ingredients in and the wrong ones out, something is going to go bad.
Flexpenser is aiming to change that. The start-up and 3DEXPERIENCE Lab accelerator program member is offering an innovative solution to dosing and sealing liquid containers, preventing spoilage, leaks and more.
Why is this so important? It’s a more complicated issue than it might seem on the surface.
According to the company, upwards of 40% of liquid medicine is wasted every year. This is due to chemical processes that can occur when bottles or vials aren’t airtight. Until now, there hasn’t been a way to effectively prevent degradation, spoilage or contamination. To solve this problem, Flexpenser developed a solution that not only provides an airtight valve, but also enables proper dosing, down to the nanoliter, and is resealable.
However, their application isn’t just for medicine. Health and beauty products, foods, even paint — all of these and more can benefit from better physical closures. While multi-use containers are the norm out of necessity, in practicality, their lids and caps don’t lend themselves to withstanding time.
And for goods like those, Flexpenser’s airtight valve can reduce the need for preservatives. While that might seem trivial, it has the potential to extend the shelf life of products without adding extra ingredients that’ll alter their chemical makeup. It essentially provides a natural solution to a chemical problem. Used at scale, their solution can bring airless and exact dispensing, dosing, and filling to manufacturing and other industrial processes.
Beyond simply developing a valve and seal fixture, Flexpenser had to take into account intricacies like fluid mechanics, and they needed software that would be able to handle all the different processes involved in creating their product. And since their offering is customizable for all kinds of bottles, vials and containers, having the ability to make adjustments at scale was a necessity they couldn’t compromise on.
CATIA gave them the toolkit they needed to get the job done, and then some. Leveraging this technology with the 3DEXPERIENCE platform allows Flexpenser to carry out fine tuning as necessary.
The complex nature of the company’s product makes it crucial for them to understand all the variables associated with fluid dynamics, oxidation, dispensing complexities and more. CATIA makes it possible for them to not just develop a model of their technology, but to carry out tests in a real-world context. The information it can glean from doing so contributes to their ability to best design solutions tailored for specific industries.
And because it prevents goods from being contaminated or spoiled, Flexpenser’s solution supports sustainability in its ability to reduce waste. For consumer goods, that’s a fantastic addition, and for something like medicine, it’s a game changer.
Shoshana is a Senior Communications Manager on the Corporate Publishing team here at Dassault Systèmes. With experience in journalism, marketing, and PR, her work has been published around the world and across the internet.