Short Summary
Branded Ingredients:
Dry Powder Extracts
Freeze-Dried Powders

Dry Powder Extracts are solvent based extracts which are macerated and extracted, then vacuum dried to standardize active ingredients. This process creates a very concentrated extract which is mostly soluble and has a wider variety of applications.
Freeze-Dried Powders are ultrasonically treated, then freeze-dried to produce a ‘whole herb’ powder extract which is more bio-available and optimally preserved.

Afrigetics Botanicals range of ultrasonic-assisted freeze-dried herbal extracts are high quality African herbal nutraceutical ingredients with optimized bio-availability and active ingredient preservation.

Our two-step process ensures a very high quality nutraceutical ingredient:

1. Ultrasonic treatment: This ruptures the plant cells and helps to release the active ingredients form the within the cell walls.
2. Freeze-drying: This preserves the active ingredients and sensitive plant molecules in close to perfect form.

This two-stage process ensures a herbal material that is more bio-available with full spectrum nutrients that are preserved at their best possible state. There is no stage where anything other than water is removed from the herb, so this is a whole herb ‘extraction’ without any excipients or solvents.

KannaEase

1. KannaEase TM Freeze-dried
   Ultrasonic extraction with Total Alkaloids 0.1%
2. KannaEase TM  dry powder extract 0.4% Alkaloids

PelaPower

1. PelaPower TM EMA11-70 (API)
2. PelaPower TM 1100 (Nutraceutical)
3. PelaPower Freeze-dried powder

AnaTest

Sceletium tortuousum freeze-dried powder
Ultrasonic extraction with Total Alkaloids 0.1%
Uses: Stress relief, improved cognition, insomnia

Why Freeze-Drying Nutraceuticals?

For nutraceutical producers, maintaining the viability of cells in the food product is as important as ensuring a long shelf-life.

Quality final product that continues to offer health benefits, while creating a supplement that won’t deteriorate for a long-period of time, requires an extremely gentle drying process.

Freeze drying removes the water content from products during the course of up to 72 hours, leaving the final product structurally stable, maintaining all the nutritional and health benefits of the original product.

Compared with more aggressive drying methods such as spray drying or air drying, freeze drying methods are proven to retain the purity of the product, even when they are ground down into a powder.

Freeze drying technology gently removes the water in a product whilst retaining the natural colour, shape and nutritional characteristics.

During the freeze drying process a deep vacuum is applied; under these conditions, neither ice or water can exist. The pressure from the vacuum, with a controlled amount of heat applied, causes the ice to leave the product as a vapour trail, which is then captured on an ice condenser within the freeze drier. Here, the vapour reforms as ice.

The process takes between 24 and 72 hours to complete, depending on the raw product, and is done in a set of ‘chambers’ that can be controlled at various temperatures and time schedules depending on specific product requirements.

Freeze drying also means there is a much reduced potential for micro-organisms existing in such low amounts of water, ensuring that nutraceuticals can stay safe to consume for an extended time period (up to 2 years).

The result is a 100% natural freeze dried product, which retains the flavour structure and nutritional benefits of the raw product. From there, it can be supplied as a stable supplement or ground down into a powder which can be inserted into tablets.

In the media:

Companies turn to freeze drying for stable nutraceuticals

20-May-2020

MANUFACTURING

As health foods and supplements grow in popularity around Europe, European Freeze Dry Country Manager, Diana Morris, explores the opportunities that freeze drying systems provide to nutraceuticals producers