“Clean caffeine”: PLT Health Solutions, zümXR introduce novel green coffee bean ingredient

10 May 2018 --- PLT Health Solutions and zümXR are launching a new green coffee bean caffeine ingredient aimed at the energy supplement, shot and food markets. Based on zümXR Targeted Release Caffeine technology, the new ingredient will be available in Delayed Release, Extended Release and Liquid-Stable Extended Release forms. The zümXR ingredients feature a delivery system technology drawn from the pharmaceutical industry that represents a significant step forward from conventional caffeine coating technologies, allowing food, beverage and supplement formulators to design custom energy profiles into their products, delivering predictable performance for the consumer.

According to the companies, the new Green Coffee Bean source of caffeine will resonate with consumers who prefer nature-based ingredients – and will open some new international markets. The caffeine is extracted via a supercritical CO2 process – without the use of chemical solvents. This makes zümXR one of the cleanest forms of caffeine on the market.

“Since it was introduced, zümXR Targeted Release technology has generated excitement with product developers because of its ability to create high quality, experiential products. Green coffee bean caffeine opens up an entire new group of consumers to this technology and experience,” says Sid Hulse, Vice President of Product Development at PLT Health Solutions. 

“With our high-quality beans and our use of solventless supercritical CO2 extraction, we’ll be offering the cleanest, highest quality energy experience on the market today. As the market matures, it is this kind of ingredient innovation that will help producers of consumer energy products,” he says.

According to the companies, a common approach to making modified release caffeine uses lipids and waxes that were originally designed to mask the flavor and later adapted to this application. Many of the early modified release solutions were done “in tablet” rather than as an ingredient matrix, which meant no powder and no beverage applications. Laboratory testing has shown that, quite often, the extended release materials either give up too much caffeine too quickly or don’t give up enough caffeine at all – limiting the consumer’s experience. 

The zümXR approach has been developed using pharma modeling techniques for dissolution design, with USP methodologies used to measure performance. It features tightly controlled coating materials that are heat stable, which broadens the applications where these ingredients can be used. 

The flexibility of this technology aims to allow targeted release caffeine solutions to be used in a broad array of applications, including beverage, supplements, stick packs, powders, gummies, bars and gels. To date, most interest in these ingredients has been centered on using them in conjunction with immediate release caffeine to design an energy profile that offers an experiential energy boost fitting the application. 

According to Sid Hulse, it is the predictable performance of these ingredients that helps deliver value in custom designed energy profiles. 

“The zümXR technology shows excellent reproducibility of dissolution profiles from batch to batch. As a result, we can design energy profiles that fit lifestyle requirements. For example, we can imagine a ‘morning pick me up’ that would function like a long-lasting cup of coffee, a pre-workout product that gives an extra boost of energy an hour or so into a workout without a post-workout crash. Or a ‘long study night’ product that gives smooth and steady long-term energy. The predictive performance of zümXR Targeted Release Caffeine makes it easy for formulators to deliver on the promises they make about their products,” he concludes.