The Critical Challenge of Nutrient Longevity
In complex food, beverage, and pharmaceutical matrices, many essential nutrients—particularly vitamins (like C, B-complex, A), delicate active compounds (like Omega-3s or probiotics), and botanicals—are highly vulnerable to degradation. Exposure to environmental factors during processing, packaging, and storage can compromise a product's nutritional claim before it even reaches the consumer.
The Major Causes of Nutrient Loss:
- Heat: High temperatures encountered during manufacturing processes (pasteurization, baking, retort sterilization).
- Oxygen: Oxidative degradation, which is accelerated in dry blends (due to surface area exposure) and during liquid filling.
- Moisture/Humidity: Accelerating chemical reactions, caking, and degradation in dry powder systems.
- pH & Ionic Strength: Incompatibility reactions in aqueous systems, causing nutrient fallout or loss of potency.
- Ingredient Interaction: Chemical reactions between incompatible nutrients within the premix itself (e.g., Vitamin C and certain trace minerals).
Fortitech's Advanced Stability Solutions
Our R&D team utilizes predictive modeling, specialized ingredient forms, and advanced particle technologies to select and protect the nutrient matrix against environmental stressors.
Core Stability Technologies:
- Custom Encapsulation: Creating physical barriers (micro-capsules) to shield vulnerable cores from moisture, oxygen, and other reactive components. The wall material is precisely chosen for compatibility with your final application.
- Antioxidant Systems: Strategically integrating custom antioxidant blends directly into the premix to scavenge free radicals and prevent oxidative rancidity, particularly important for lipids and fat-soluble vitamins.
- Matrix Selection: Using proprietary carrier systems and matrix components that buffer $\text{pH}$ changes and reduce water activity, creating a chemically stable micro-environment for the entire premix.
- Nutrient Derivatization: Utilizing highly stable forms of nutrients (like coated Vitamin A or magnesium salts) that inherently resist common forms of degradation.
Testing and Assurance Protocol
Meeting the "Guaranteed Shelf Life" requires rigorous, data-driven testing that models real-world conditions.
Our Stability Testing Protocol:
- Accelerated Stability Testing: Subjecting premix samples to extreme conditions ($\text{e.g., } 40^{\circ} \text{C} \text{ / } 75\% \text{ RH}$) to rapidly predict long-term performance and identify potential failure points.
- Processing Simulation: Exposure to specified client manufacturing conditions (e.g., high-shear mixing, extrusion heat) to verify nutrient retention post-processing.
- Analytical Verification: Using high-performance analytical techniques (HPLC, spectrometry) to measure the active ingredient load and ensure compliance throughout the storage period.
Strategic Value for Manufacturers
Stability is the foundation of your nutritional claim and brand reputation. We manage the risk so you can focus on the final product.
- Reduced Overages: Our guaranteed stability allows you to reduce the expensive "overages" (excess nutrients added to compensate for anticipated loss) you must include in your formulation.
- Compliance Certainty: We ensure that even at the end of the stated shelf life, your product still meets the minimum label claims required by regulatory bodies.
- Consistent Efficacy: By protecting the nutrient profile, we guarantee the functional benefits advertised to the end consumer remain consistent from batch to batch.
Ready to guarantee your product's potency and shelf life?
Request a Technical Consultation.