News
Plastics in Morocco: what the sector makes
When plastics come up in Morocco, people often think of bags, banned since 2016. Yet the Moroccan plastics industry makes much more: agricultural films, pipes for construction, and packaging, down to the bottles that hold medicines.
2 min read
Polypropylene: the plastic of caps, pill containers and hinges
Open a pill container with a flip lid, or a flip-top cap: the small strip of plastic that joins the two parts is almost always polypropylene. This material has a rare quality: it bends without tiring.
2 min read
PET preform: the hidden part behind every bottle
Nobody buys a preform. Yet every PET bottle and flask was once one: a small thick tube, like a test tube, whose neck already carries its final thread.
2 min read
Cleanroom: what "produced in a controlled environment" means
A particle that falls into an empty bottle will stay there until it reaches the patient. That is the whole point of a controlled environment: not a cleaner workshop for its own sake, but one where contamination is controlled, measured and proven.
2 min read
"BPA free": what the label really means
"BPA free" appears on baby bottles, water bottles and boxes. The label reassures. Yet it says little about most plastic packaging, which never contained any.
2 min read
Silica gel: how a cap keeps tablets dry
An effervescent tablet starts to fizz as soon as it meets water, and the surrounding air always holds some. Between the two stand a tube, a cap and a very special material: silica gel.
3 min read
Gamma sterilisation: which plastics can take it
An eye drop bottle must be sterile, and stay so. One way to achieve this is to pass gamma rays through it, without heating it. Its plastic still has to withstand the treatment.
2 min read
Squeeze tubes: single-layer or multilayer, a question of barrier
From the outside, nothing tells two cream tubes apart. Cut through their walls: one is made of a single material, the other of several layers, some thinner than a hair, each with its own job. What separates them is what the product can tolerate.
2 min read
Stability studies and climatic zones: why packaging changes by country
The same tablet, in the same bottle, does not live the same life in Oslo and in Abidjan. That is why stability studies are run under the conditions of the country of sale, and why the pack sometimes has to change with them.
2 min read
In brief
Plast-Expo trade fair in Casablanca
Tecmom presented its range of bottles, tubes and pill containers at the Plast-Expo trade fair in Casablanca, meeting pharmaceutical and cosmetic manufacturers from the region.