1888II Improves Oral Solid Dose Production with Better Filtration

Filter Holdings, Inc. (“FHI”) has expanded the production capacity of its proprietary 1888II life science porous material at its Union, New Jersey, USA headquarters. First introduced in the early 2000s, the 1888II has become one of FHI’s top-selling porous materials for pharmaceutical and nutraceutical production.  

Membrane Matrix Filter for FDA-Regulated Processes

“It was visionary of Dr. Jim Shahidi to commit to prototyping and developing our own fabric – usually that’s the domain of much larger businesses.  The fabric has to be cuttable, with no errant fibers, no potential to shed fibers, FDA compliant, static charge dissipating, it has to be capable of being heat/laser cut, and then sewn into elaborate ‘octopus’ style filters used by our customers at pharmaceutical and nutraceutical plants – and there’s a significant amount of paperwork documenting the suitability of the product when used by our Tier 1 pharma OEM and CDMO customers,” said Paul Silverthorne, Vice President Life Sciences of FHI.

1888II was developed to:

• Have a nominal pore size of 0.25 microns. 
• Has low stickiness, low adhesion, and significant chemical resistance due to its use of ePTFE in construction. 
• Decrease loss of micronized API, thereby increasing API yields 
• Less filter blinding, leading to fewer filter changeouts
• Fewer change-outs reduce contamination and cleaning risks, while maintaining longer production runs 

New Jersey-Based Life Science Filter Manufacturer

For nearly 80 years, FHI has served life science customers with products originally developed under the Shaffer Products name. Centrally located on the US East Coast, the company’s production site supports thousands of customers annually, offering new products and repairs.

“We design products for OEM customers – the equipment makers of machinery used for Oral Solid Dosage (“OSD”) and other production methods.  We also support users of those machines directly when they want to introduce design improvements and higher performance, lots of times our customers are looking for higher throughput or reduced downtime,” said Carlos Dominguez, Production Manager for FHI’s life science business. “We take a lot of pride in how we design products to make it easier for our customers to change out the filters, or how we can improve products to last longer. It was that innovation that drove the introduction of 1888II.”  

FHI has thousands of life science installations with production sites across the United States. Most of those are located in the Northeast near the company’s production site in New Jersey.  FHI also provides diagnostic and repair services for customer filters.