Vitafoods Europe 2024 live: Roquette elevates softgel technology with gelatin alternative capsules

16 May 2024 --- We visit Roquette at the ongoing Vitafoods Europe 2024 trade show, where the plant-based ingredients leader has launched a pea starch premix for nutraceutical and pharmaceutical softgel capsules. The Lycagel Flex hydroxypropyl premix is designed to provide producers with a more effective alternative to gelatin-based softgel capsules and tap into the growing demand for vegan solutions. 

Built on Roquette’s “market-first” Lycagel pea starch technology, the new plasticizer-free excipient allows manufacturers to select the optimal plasticizer combination and customize formulations for a range of production and end-user needs while “setting new standards in quality, stability and performance” for plant-based softgels.

The company points out that animal-derived ingredients, like gelatin, are becoming less of a universally accepted standard as increasingly consumers pursue vegetarian, vegan or flexitarian diets.

“The Lycagel Flex is our new plant-based solution to make vegan soft gels, based on a pea starch technology we launched about four years ago — first with a component, Lycagel, and with a Lycagel premix that contains Lycagel as the film forming component, carrageenan to give the film the elasticity to make a soft gel and we also added a plasticizer at the time,” Udo Losehand, global account manager at Roquette, tells Nutrition Insight on the show floor.

“Now we found that we need to offer an alternative that makes this solution more versatile to formulators, so we’re leaving out the sorbitol. We now only have two components in the mix, so that formulators can add the plasticizer at their discretion to give it the optimal performance in the soft gel capsule.”

Flexible formulations
The new solution follows the technology of a gelatin-based capsule with some modifications, but by using all-natural and non-animal ingredients, formulators can tap into the plant-based trend.

“There’s two aspects — we have the nutraceutical compliance and the pharmaceutical compliance, but, also, in the nutraceutical world, formulators want to be flexible to use the plasticizer of their choice, so they can use glycerol as a plasticizer or sorbitol or a combination of both,” says Losehand.

“There are various combinations out there that are being favored by the various manufacturers, so we like that Lycagel Flex caters to those needs, compared to our earlier version, which always had the sorbitol already included.”Lycagel Flex provides formulators with flexible alternatives to gelatin-based softgel capsules and taps into the demand for animal-free solutions.

Process benefits
Similar to its predecessor, Lycagel Flex offers softgel producers a plant-based solution that replaces gelatin while offering process benefits, including a reduced degassing time of five minutes versus the minimum 60 required for gelatin formulations and the potential for easy equipment cleaning with only hot water.

Beyond the production line, the new premix delivers market-leading performance and stability throughout a product’s shelf life.

Upon testing, capsules produced using Lycagel Flex maintained a clear, shiny appearance and optimal hardness with no sticking or seal leakage following six months of storage at 40° C and 75% relative humidity.

With no significant increase in disintegration time or water content after months in storage, the capsules did not display crosslinking, demonstrating their ability to maintain the same mechanical strength and capsule integrity at day 180 as they had directly after the production process.

By Joshua Poole, with live reporting from William Bradford Nichols at Vitafoods Europe 2024 in Geneva, Switzerland