CDF is bringing the Squiz System to North America: a machine built for high-viscosity products that leave valuable product behind in the IBC liner. The story of why it exists does not start with the machine. It starts with a product loss that most plants have never measured, and it is worth understanding even if you never buy anything from us.

The product loss nobody owns

Walk any plant that runs thick product through intermediate bulk containers, the IBCs many plants call IBC totes, and you will find the same scene. A container empties. The pump slows, then cavitates. Someone shuts it off, judges the container done, and the liner comes out for disposal. The residual product inside, the product left behind after dispensing, leaves with it. Nobody weighs it.

Every other step in that plant has an owner and a number. Fill accuracy is measured to the gram. Line speed is posted on a board. But the last few percent of product in the container, the part that will not pump, belongs to no one. It shows up nowhere as a yield number, because yield calculations stop at the filler. It leaves the building inside a liner, inside a dumpster, and it never appears on a report.

The product left behind when dispensing high-viscosity products

When we ask to weigh a few liners after dispensing, the room usually goes quiet. With thick products, we routinely find pounds of finished, sellable product in every discarded liner. Nobody planned for the loss. It was assumed, and then it was accepted, and both of those words are doing work that a scale should be doing instead. Engineers call it residual product. On a P&L it is product loss, and either way it is yield the plant already earned but never shipped.

The loss is easy to ignore because it happens gradually, a little in every container, hidden inside a waste stream that is already accepted as a cost of doing business. And when it is priced at all, it is priced at the wrong number: the disposal fee, not the manufactured value of the product itself. Plants compensate with the same toolkit everywhere: heat, time, gravity, and people. All four cost money, and none of them appear on a report. Plants that run the calculation at product value are usually surprised, and occasionally alarmed.

In manufacturer trials on thick cosmetic creams, with liners weighed before and after, controlled evacuation cut product waste per liner by 94, 95, and 96 percent across three trials. Dairy and medical gel operations have measured reductions in the same range. The full trial stories are in the ebook below.

Liner evacuation, engineered as a system

The Squiz System is the current state of that engineering, developed by Liquidpack of Onda, Spain, and brought to the U.S. market by CDF. It winds the liner from the top down during dispensing, in sync with the plant’s pneumatic pump, moving product toward the dispense valve. The winding is the product recovery: residual product that used to leave the plant inside the liner moves through the dispense valve instead. The liner it winds is a reinforced CDF form-fit liner engineered to carry that mechanical load. On average, 0.1 to 0.2 percent of product remains after dispensing.

It runs hands-free, with no fixed installation and no electrical connection: a stainless frame on locking casters, working with the pump and IBCs a plant already has. Containers return to service without a wash cycle, and liners leave with very little product left to pay for twice, once as material and once as heavier waste.

Before changing anything, weigh three liners

Take three liners from your thickest product after dispensing, put them on a scale, and average the number. It takes fifteen minutes, and the result usually changes the conversation. Then put your number into the Cost of Dispensing Calculator to see what a year of your current dispensing actually costs, and if the number is worth a conversation, our team will review your process and give you a straight answer on what fits. You keep the analysis either way.

The full story, including how dispensing engineering evolved as products got thicker, the complete trial results, and the questions worth asking inside your own plant, is in our free ebook.