Vitamin and Mineral Mixtures for Sensitive Applications

SternVitamin produces all nutrient premixes on plant designed to pharmaceutical standards. The equipment is made of stainless steel throughout; it is housed in a completely independent and separate part of the factory and meets the most sophisticated requirements.

5/23/2011 --- Gentle processing, close adherence to formulations and absolute safety are of central importance in the production of micronutrient preparations. For sensitive applications, for example baby food, they are essential requirements. Sternvitamin has one of the most modern compounding plants for quality micronutrients, vitamin mixtures and mineral premixes.

Children have special needs in respect of vitamins and minerals. For babies, especially, the food must contain all the necessary nutrients in the right amounts. A further aspect is that a baby’s digestive, metabolic and excretory organs have to work harder than those of an adult. Against this background it is understandable why the hygiene and quality standards for industrially produced baby food are so high.

SternVitamin produces all nutrient premixes on plant designed to pharmaceutical standards. The equipment is made of stainless steel throughout; it is housed in a completely independent and separate part of the factory and meets the most sophisticated requirements. The plant covers two floors of the building, has separate rooms for each step in the production process and is ventilated with filtered air. Besides functional tests, regular monitoring is conducted to measure and control the microbial count of the air. The premises are divided into different hygiene zones. The staff, who wear special protective clothing, enter the production area through personnel air locks. The door does not open until they have disinfected their hands. Goods entering and leaving the building pass into the production area through a materials air lock. Slightly higher air pressure in the production rooms prevents impurities from entering from outside when the high-speed doors are opened.

“When the production plant was built we stressed the importance of optimum cleaning”, says Frank Hellerung from Business Development Pharma and Food. “We have floor drains in every room to permit wet cleaning. Because both the blending equipment and the rooms themselves are washed down regularly and also at the customer’s request – including the light switches, door handles etc. The cleaning process has been validated according to the EU GMP Guide, Part II, which is applicable to the manufacture of pharmaceutical products.” Not only customers from the baby food industry benefit by these elaborate hygiene and safety measures. For example, wet cleaning of the blending containers prevents substances that cause haze from entering the premix – an important consideration in the production of fortified beverages such as energy drinks. And under these conditions it is no problem to manufacture products to kosher or halal standards either.

For baby food especially, but for other fortified foods too, precise dosing of the nutrients – accurate to the gram – is of major importance. Our staff make up the required nutrient mixture with the aid of the barcode-controlled Mettler Toledo weighing system. The relevant formulation is developed by the SternVitamin applications technologists according to the customer’s specifications and the data is then transmitted digitally to the weighing system. This guarantees that each vitamin and each mineral is added in exactly the right amount.

The weighed ingredients are marshalled, put into the hopper and then released into the blending container. The unit is a closed system that is then turned on its own axis in the blending room. In this way the single components are mixed by the free fall method, solely by the effect of gravity, without shearing forces and therefore with maximum care for the product. Cutter heads can be activated additionally if required, depending on the product, to ensure extremely fine, homogeneous dispersion.

Finally the premix is sifted again. Safety sifting is performed by means of a centrifugal sifting machine in order to remove any lumps or foreign matter that may have been present in the raw materials. The screen size varies according to the product. After the mixture has passed through the metal detector successfully it is filled into aluminium bags which are welded to ensure optimum protection of the product against air and light. “Every step in production is controlled by a barcode scanner. The code number guarantees full traceability. That means we can offer our customers the highest possible degree of safety”, Frank Hellerung emphasizes.