Sabinsa, the producer of botanical extracts, has completed the construction of a new supercritical CO2 extraction facility at Bangalore, India. The plant belongs to Sabinsa's SAMI Labs manufacturing subsidiary.
Dr Muhammed Majeed, founder of the Sabinsa Corporation and chairman of SAMI Labs, said that the facility "would provide additional opportunities for us to serve our customers better". The plant has a capacity of around 2000kg of feed material per day.
A major advantage of supercritical extraction technology is that residual solvents are eliminated from the final product. This is of particular importance for botanical extracts and solvent based products. Of equal importance is the absence of heavy metals, since they are not extractable even if they are present in the starting material. Supercritical extraction also significantly reduces the bio-burden, or microbial load, due to the pressurised use of carbon dioxide, Majeed explained.
Sabinsa has been one of the pioneers of Ayurvedic herbal extracts in the US market. It manufactures phytonutrients, herbal extracts and fine chemicals used for nutritional, pharmaceutical, cosmeceutical and food products.