Toothpaste Manufacturing: From Tooth Powder to ABB Robots

Toothpaste looks simple: a mild abrasive to remove stains, humectants that stop it drying out, and a detergent that makes the foam, squeezed into a tube. Toothpaste manufacturing still has to fill, cut and seal millions of those tubes without mistakes, then pack them into cartons, cases and pallets. This post follows the product from tooth powders sold in tins to the collapsible tube invented in Connecticut, looks at this autumn's recall of 4.3 million tubes and the switch to recyclable tubes, and asks where ABB robots could help on the filling and packing lines.

The toothpaste section of a supermarket, with many brands and variants side by side, 2021. Photo: Justmee3001 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How tooth powder became paste in a tube

Tooth powders came into general use in Britain in the 19th century, and most of them were homemade from chalk, pulverised brick or salt. An 1866 home encyclopedia recommended pulverised charcoal instead. Powders were also sold in tins, like the carbolic tooth powder of F. C. Calvert and Co., and in the United States Arm and Hammer kept selling a baking soda tooth powder until about 2000. Paste arrived in jars before it arrived in tubes. Colgate began mass-producing an aromatic toothpaste in jars in 1873, more than twenty years before it switched to tubes.

A tin of carbolic tooth powder from F. C. Calvert and Co., a product no longer made. Photo: Alf van Beem / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

The tube came from New London, Connecticut. Dr. Washington Wentworth Sheffield opened his dental practice there in 1850 and made a paste that, unlike the tooth powders of the time, his customers loved. In the 1870s his son Lucius, studying dentistry in Paris, watched artists using paint in collapsible tubes, and by 1880 Dr. Sheffield's Creme Dentifrice was sold in one. The family firm became the New England Collapsible Tube Company and made metal tubes for many years. Colgate followed in 1896 with its Dental Cream in collapsible tubes, which were originally made of lead.

A full page advertisement for Colgate's Ribbon Dental Cream in the October 1921 issue of Little Folks magazine, illustrated by Edith F. Butler. Photo: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Machines took over the filling. On one semi-automatic machine sold in India, the operator loads each filled tube into a holder, and the machine seals it, prints a batch code and trims the end. The Obermeyer TU25 is another small semi-automatic filler, and the TUFÜMA 50 is an old filling machine built in East Germany. On a modern line, a small block of colour printed at the sealed end of each tube lets light sensors find the end of the tube so it can be filled, cut and sealed correctly, as Colgate explains. Kolynos, the first toothpaste with disinfectants, was made in 22 countries and sold in 88 by 1937.

A semi-automatic tube filling and sealing machine; the operator loads each filled tube into a holder for sealing, coding and trimming. Photo: Adwebsmedia / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Recalls, recyclable tubes and ABB's packing robots

In October the US Food and Drug Administration listed 17 voluntary nationwide recalls covering about 4.3 million tubes, including Brush Buddies children's toothpastes in Barbie, Hot Wheels, Crayola and My Little Pony flavours, along with evo and ARU products. The manufacturer was Pritam International Private Limited, and the recalls began on 10 September. The FDA cited deviations from current good manufacturing practice but has not described the specific problem, and it classed the recall as Class II. In May 2025 a separate recall had covered 4,617,316 units made by Kenil Healthcare of India.

A small semi-automatic tube filling machine from Gustav Obermeyer. Photo: Twrichter / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

Tube materials are changing at the same time. Traditional tubes combine different plastics, often wrapped around a thin layer of aluminium, which makes conventional recycling impossible, and at least 1.5 billion of them are thrown away worldwide each year, about 400 million in the United States. Colgate developed a tube made of high-density polyethylene, recognised by plastics recyclers in 2019, made the design open source, and began changing its production equipment to convert all its brands. In New London, Sheffield Pharmaceuticals still makes toothpaste and tubes, and its products are sold in 60,000 retail doors.

A tube of Colgate toothpaste on a black background, 2010. Photo: William Warby / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

We found no ABB robot on a toothpaste line, so this is a possibility. The closest real ABB example is packing: at Dot's Pretzels in Edgerton, Kansas, two case packing lines with five IRB 360 FlexPicker delta robots pick bags in eight sizes off conveyors and place them into cases, and an IRB 660 stacks the cases on pallets. The IRB 360 family comes with payloads from 1 to 8 kg, tracks moving conveyors, uses ABB's PickMaster software for vision, and has a stainless variant built for washdown. Picking toothpaste cartons into cases would be a similar job, though we found no example, and our post on case packing robots shows more of these cells.

Seen from above, an ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker drops pretzel bags into a chute that fills cases at Dot's Pretzels in Edgerton, Kansas. Photo: ABB

Where toothpaste lines go next

The recall list shows how many variants one maker can run: children's flavours, whitening, sensitivity, gum health and cavity protection, each in its own tube and carton. Dot's handles its eight bag sizes with different vacuum grippers on the same robots, which is the kind of changeover a toothpaste line with that many variants would need. Loading tubes into a semi-automatic sealer, the job an operator does by hand on the machine described above, is a possible task for a small ABB arm, and a cell like that would usually be planned and tested in RobotStudio first. Our post on cosmetics manufacturing covers similar tubes for creams.

An ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker picks bags off a conveyor on one of Dot's two case packing lines. Photo: ABB

At home, the change people will notice is the tube. HDPE tubes can pass through recycling sorting equipment and be turned into new plastic bottles, but the shareholder advocacy group As You Sow expects recycling volumes to stay low until other brands switch, because collection only pays off at scale. For families checking the children's recall, the affected tubes carry expiry dates from November 2026 to June 2028 and were sold online, including on Amazon and eBay.

Two Zendium toothpaste tubes, one with a children's design, next to toothbrushes on a shelf, 2009. Photo: Thomas Angermann / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Records are the first open problem. A recall built on manufacturing practice deviations shows why a plant needs to know what happened to every batch, and robot cells with vision can log each pick and each rejected tube. Changeovers come next: new tube materials need new settings for filling and sealing, and Colgate is changing production equipment to move its brands to the recyclable tube. Small makers such as Sheffield, which also produces medicines for other companies in New London, need automation that pays off at lower volumes. And every cell needs people who can set it up, clean it and fix it when a tube jams.

An ABB IRB 660 stacks packed cases on a pallet at Dot's Pretzels. Photo: ABB

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