“It certainly has tremendous value when you are tableting,” said Douglas Lynch of LycoRed.
“It is dual purpose, you can also look at it for cold water soluble beverages. This is fairly revolutionary for LycoRed because it can work in both applications,” Lynch, vice president of business development in North America, told NutraIngredients-USA.
The new beadlet line, manufactured at a Lycored facility in the United States, will complement LycoRed’s core encapsulation technologies of applied gelatin, alginate and spray-dried coating systems.
Enhanced stability
One of the big benefits of the new beadlet system is that it deals with a problem faced by manufacturers dealing with carotenoids. The compounds are unstable, and can start breaking down even during the manufacturing process, Lynch said.
“It’s always been a very strong indicator of your manufacturing capability is how quickly you process these products,” Lynch said.
Product runs that could take days to complete could be problematic when some of the ingredients like carotenoids could be degrading while waiting in hoppers on the production line. There are ways to deal with these problems, Lynch said, but the new beadlet technology eliminates the need for those workarounds.
The coating system is also robust, and can withstand the pressure of the tablet press that tends to cause other coatings to leak and the ingredients within to start degrading as the product stands on the shelf.
“This does offer customers that are either tableting or are adding powders to their beverages via mechanical means this does offer them a very shelf stable option,” Lynch said.
Combination formulas
The starch beadlets are initially available for the carotenoids lycopene, beta-carotene, and lutein, and also for vitamin D and vitamin A-acetate. The starch-based, gelatin-free coating system could allow combinations of ingredients, which is one of the future paths of opportunity for the sector, according to the company.
According to Dorit Rozner, head of R&D for LycoRed, the future of carotenoids lies in the synergistic effects of combination formulations. LycoRed said its researchers have worked on multiple models to show, for example, that the combination of lutein, lycopene, beta-carotene and carnosic acid and monitor their anti-inflammation effects.
By itself, lutein has little anti-inflammatory benefit, “But, when combining lutein with lycopene, several markers for anti-inflammation are significantly impacted,” Rozner said.
LycoRed has previously used its coating technology to address formuation challenges with a variety of ingredients. Last year for instance, it launched a coating for B vitamins that overcame the issue with off odors in cosmetic applications.