Hot-melt extrusion in Food and Pharma

HME in Food and Pharma

Tablets and capsules are currently the most popular oral solid dosage form in the pharmaceutical industry. Tablets and capsules with fine particles of the active product, give a significantly faster dissolution. These particles can be added in the form of micro pellets.

Pellets are not powder and not granulate; they are characterized by a defined shape and a very narrow particle size distribution. This allows a very wide range of applications of pellets that integrate active substances.

Employing hot-melt / melt extrusion, even the processing of poorly soluble carrier/active substance combinations, no longer poses a major problem in the pharmaceutical industry. Continuous manufacturing delivers many benefits in production and in speeding up the development cycles for new drugs.

MAAG offers a wide range of products for hot-melt extrusion in food and pharma. Depending on the desired process we have several products that can meet the customers’ requirements.

MAAG systems all comply with the regulations in food & pharma industries.

Advantages of the MAAG systems

• Homogeneous, consistent particle/pellet sizes
• Production of micro pellets ≥ 0,3 mm
• Continuous manufacturing
• Simplification of complex, multi-stage processes
• No grinding required
• No/ much less dust created than with conventional methods
• Simple scale-up of your process
• For pelletizing directly from an extruder or reactor vessel

Our solutions for HME

Pharma applications:
Innovative technologies for labs, R&D, and production 

Gear pumps for extrusion:
Extrex PFS-20 GP 

Pelletizers:
SPHERO® PFS melt pelletizer in a contained system
DROPPO® PFS drop pelletizer for low viscosity formulations
PRIMO dry cut strand pelletizer
Belt cooling pelletizing system PFS Series 30 

Die head:
Die head PFS Series 50 

Cooling belt:
Strand cooling belt PFS for transport and air-cooling of strands 

Check the videos here:

MAAG Belt cooling pelletizing system

MAAG SPHERO Melt die face pelletizer

Read more about bioavailability here.