New Equipment Advances Make Better Dietary Supplements, Foods, and Beverages

Two equipment developers announced recent upgrades that dietary supplement and healthy food/beverage manufacturers will appreciate.

Tablet press supplier Natoli Engineering Company (St. Charles, MO) has released two new tablet presses. The NP-RD20 is designed for R&D purposes, capable of manufacturing single test tablets. The rotary table press is an automated, single-station mobile lab press that is GMP and CE compliant. Features include programmable precompression parameters and dwell time, as well as data acquisition capabilities to collect and track test results such as compression curve and elasticity of single, bi-layer, and multilayer tablets. Natoli calls its other new tablet press, the NP-155, a “high-quality, low-cost solution for tablet manufacturers in need of a medium-output rotary press.” It can produce more than 280,000 tablets/hr. Features include a hardened steel die table, auto-lubricated turret, touchscreen HMI, optional force feeders, and direct-drive design.

Mixers specialist Charles Ross & Son Co. (Hauppauge, NY) has made a number of equipment advances. Its new HSM-703XC is an improved model of its 10HP X-series ultra-high-shear mixer. The inline rotor/stator mixer produces very fine particle dispersions and emulsions with exceptionally narrow particle-size distribution. It is well suited to more vigorous mixing, enabling greater size reduction and higher throughput compared to conventional rotor/stator mixers and colloid mills.

The company is now also offering a new high-efficiency charging hopper for its line of high-shear mixers featuring Solids/Liquid Injection Manifold (SLIM) technology. The SLIM is designed for high-speed powder injection into liquids, without requiring eductors or pumps. “The improved hopper design ensures a steady rate of feed delivery and prevents ‘rat holes’ or bridging of bulk solids” for ingredients such as guar gum, carrageenan, xanthan gum, alginates, pectin, calcium carbonate, and more, the company says.