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Fluid Power and Process Equipment for the Pharmaceutical Industry
A pharmaceutical plant runs on utilities that can put a batch at risk without ever appearing on its record: the compressed air that coats a tablet, the gas that blankets a filled vial, the pneumatics that open and close a filling valve thousands of times a shift.
When you choose pharmaceutical equipment suppliers for those systems, you’re choosing who you trust with contamination control, validation evidence and uptime. Control Gear Group, specialists in compressed air and industrial equipment, has supplied and serviced fluid power systems from Treforest since 1973.
What Do Pharmaceutical Sites Need From Their Equipment Suppliers?
Four things: utilities that don’t contaminate the product, documents your quality team can file, equipment that keeps running, and a supplier who understands how the parts connect.
The backdrop is good manufacturing practice (GMP): the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the UK regulator for medicines manufacturing, inspects licensed sites, and the government’s GMP and GDP guidance explains that some inspections arrive with little or no notice. Deficiencies are graded critical, major or other, and a wet air line is a finding nobody wants to explain.
Control Gear supplies, installs, services and tests the compressed air, filtration, pneumatics, vacuum, cooling, gases, hydraulics and hose that a pharmaceutical site runs on.
One team looking after the whole utility chain means a fault in one system is far less likely to surprise you in another.
50+
years of industrial equipment experience
Oil-Free Compressed Air and Air Treatment for GMP Sites
We are one of the longest established Atlas Copco Premier Distributors in the UK. Atlas Copco is one of the world’s largest compressor manufacturers, and compressed air has been our core business for five decades.
Instrument and Process Air
Pharmaceutical air does two jobs. Instrument air drives valves, actuators and packaging machinery, while process air touches the product or its primary container, in tablet coating, pneumatic conveying of powders, fermentation and blow-off.
For product-contact gases, the EU’s GMP Annex 1 on sterile manufacture (point 6.18) requires appropriate chemical, particulate and microbial quality, with oil and water content specified.
Class 0 Oil-Free Compressors
That is why we build pharmaceutical air around certified Class 0 oil-free compressors, such as the Atlas Copco Z-series, rather than relying on filters to clean up a lubricated machine.
Downstream, a typical purification train runs an aftercooler and water separator to remove bulk condensate, then a desiccant dryer to a −40 °C pressure dew point, so free water can’t collect in the pipework.
Multi-stage particulate and activated carbon filtration follows, with a sterile filter at the point of use for aseptic duties.
Our compressed air for pharmaceutical manufacturing page covers process air design in detail.
Validation, Change Control and Service
EU GMP Annex 15 expects the quality of air and other gases to be confirmed after installation and kept under review. We support your validation team from risk assessment through installation, operational and performance qualification (IQ, OQ and PQ).
A common gap is a compressor or dryer replaced like-for-like without anyone telling quality. Our installation team works within your change control, and our Guardian Service Plan gives fixed annual servicing with seven or nine years of warranty cover.
Festo and IMI Norgren Pneumatics
Sticking valves, irregular cylinder motion and seals failing early are usually traced back to the air supply, not the component. On a filling or packaging line, those faults show up as rejects and stoppages.
As an official Festo partner, we supply cleanroom-compliant Festo components designed for precision control in sterile environments, along with valve terminals, cylinders, air preparation units and electric automation. Our Festo pneumatics and automation team troubleshoots, repairs and retrofits Festo equipment. We are also an authorised IMI Norgren distributor and build pneumatic control panels to order.
Air Quality Testing at the Point of Use
A certificate taken at the compressor tells you about the compressor. It says nothing about what reaches a coating pan at the end of a long pipework run. Annex 1 puts monitoring at the point of use, and so do we.
We work with accredited laboratories to measure particles, water and oil against ISO 8573-1, the compressed air purity standard.
Class 0 means a purity specified by the user or supplier and stricter than Class 1, not zero contamination, so it has to be written down. We recommend a full air quality test at critical points of use at least once a year, and more often where your risk assessment calls for it.
Operators in air-fed suits or masks, often used to contain potent compounds, need breathing air that meets BS EN 12021, the standard for breathing air quality. Our breathing air quality testing covers:
- Site assessment
- Point-of-use sampling
- A compliance report
Sterile, Process and HEPA Filtration
Filtration is where pharmaceutical contamination control lives or dies. Annex 1 (point 6.19) requires gases used in aseptic processes to pass through a sterilising-grade filter, nominally 0.22 µm or finer, at the point of use. It also requires those filters to be integrity tested.
We are official distributors for 3M Cuno, covering process filtration from pre-filtration to final sterile filtration and laboratory applications. We have been an authorised Pall industrial filtration distributor for well over 20 years. For room air, we supply HEPA and ambient air filters from AAF, Vokes and Camfil.
Our industrial and process filtration division designs, installs and services filter systems, and carries out condition monitoring, sampling and analysis on site and off site.
Hydraulics, Hose, Process Valves and Dust Extraction
We are a HYDAC partner, supplying HYDAC filtration, accumulators and fluid care units, with oil cleanliness monitoring to ISO 4406. Our hydraulics engineers repair pumps, valves and cylinders and recertify accumulators.
Our BFPA-certified hose team makes up hydraulic and industrial hose assemblies with pressure test certification. The industrial range includes food and pharmaceutical grade hose and stainless metallic hose. Our process valve range includes lined butterfly valves for corrosive and hygienic duties, matched to the medium and pressure.
Powder dispensing, granulation and tablet compression produce dust that COSHH requires you to control. As an authorised Nederman distributor and Gold Channel Partner, we supply extraction and test local exhaust ventilation (LEV). The HSE’s guidance on LEV examination sets a thorough examination and test at least every 14 months. Combustible powders and solvents also bring DSEAR zoning into play.
Inspection, Compliance and the Paperwork Behind It
We hold ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 accreditation, provide on-site service across South Wales and the South West, and supply UK-wide.
Under the Pressure Systems Safety Regulations 2000, a pressure system such as an air receiver and its connected pipework must not be operated until a written scheme of examination, drawn up or certified by a competent person, is in place. We prepare Written Schemes of Examination for compressed air systems. Fines in England and Wales are unlimited, but the real point is that unexamined receivers can fail.
One boundary is worth being clear about. We supply equipment, test results and documentation, but qualifying a utility and releasing product remain your quality team’s decisions.
Hospitals are a different regime too: medical gas pipelines in healthcare estates follow HTM 02-01, which we cover on our compressed air for the medical industry page.
Vacuum, Process Cooling and On-Site Nitrogen
Freeze-drying, vacuum conveying and packaging all depend on vacuum. Tablet coating, fermentation and lyophilisation all need stable temperatures. Annex 1 names gas overlay of aseptically filled products and allows aseptic processing under an inert atmosphere.
Vacuum Pumps
Vacuum Pumps
Oil mist from an oil-sealed pump near a clean area is a product risk. We supply Atlas Copco DZS dry claw pumps for clean extraction, alongside GHS VSD+ oil-sealed screw pumps where the duty suits them.
Chillers and Process Coolers
Chillers and Process Coolers
We supply and service Atlas Copco TCX, TCS and TCA industrial chillers and process coolers, and our F-Gas certified engineers maintain chillers of any make. Annex 1 (point 6.21) asks for cooling plant to sit outside the filling room where possible.
Nitrogen Generation
Nitrogen Generation
Cylinder logistics and purity paperwork are the usual headaches. Atlas Copco PSA and membrane generators produce nitrogen on site at purities up to 99.999%, removing cylinder deliveries, rental and the handling of high-pressure bottles.
See our industrial gases range for generator options.
Talk to Control Gear About Your Pharmaceutical Site
- Process and instrument air: Atlas Copco Class 0 oil-free compressors, desiccant dryers, filtration
- Aseptic points of use: 3M Cuno sterile filtration, air quality testing
- Cleanroom air: HEPA and ambient air filters from AAF, Vokes and Camfil
- Filling and packaging lines: Festo and IMI Norgren pneumatics and automation
- Freeze-drying and conveying: Atlas Copco dry claw vacuum pumps
- Process cooling: Atlas Copco chillers and process coolers
- Inerting and overlay: On-site PSA and membrane nitrogen generation
- Powder handling: Nederman extraction and LEV testing
- Plant equipment: HYDAC hydraulics, hose assemblies, process valves
If you’re planning a new line, a utility upgrade or a requalification, send us your user requirement specification, a list of points of use with the air quality class each one needs, and your current test results. Our engineers will come back with Atlas Copco, Festo and 3M Cuno options across compressed air, filtration, pneumatics, vacuum, cooling and gases, specified together. Call us or use the contact form to arrange a site survey.
Get in touch
Contact Control Gear today
Tell us about your site and we’ll come back with the right service, audit or system recommendation.
- Visit us Heol Groeswen, Treforest Industrial Estate, Pontypridd, Rhondda Cynon Taff, CF37 5YF
- Call us 01443 843126
- Email us enquiries@control-gear.com
Mon–Fri · 09:00–17:00
24/7 emergency call-out available