Polyphenols: Mastering Spray Drying and Granulation to Overcome Formulation Challenges

Developing a new nutraceutical, cosmetic, or food product is no easy task. When your ingredient belongs to the polyphenol family, the challenge becomes even greater. These plant-derived compounds are highly valued by consumers for their powerful antioxidant properties. Yet once they enter the manufacturing process, they often prove to be fragile, unstable, and difficult to handle.

How can you transform a polyphenol-rich liquid extract into a free-flowing, stable powder that is easy to incorporate into your formulations—without compromising its exceptional functional properties? Excessive heat can reduce your ingredient’s efficacy, while poor powder handling can clog production equipment and slow down your entire manufacturing process.

This is precisely where INNOV’IA’s expertise makes the difference. By combining tailor-made powder processing technologies—including spray drying, granulation, and microencapsulation—we turn your formulation challenges into competitive advantages. Discover how our industrial processes help secure your formulations, improve manufacturing efficiency, and deliver consistently high-quality finished products.

Today’s consumers are increasingly looking for natural ingredients that support preventive health. Polyphenols perfectly meet these expectations. These naturally occurring plant compounds are found in a wide variety of everyday foods, including:

• Red berries and grapes
• Green and black tea
• Cocoa and dark chocolate
• Onions, apples, and many other fruits and vegetables

In nature, polyphenols play an essential role. They contribute to the vibrant colours of plants, their distinctive aromas, and above all, their natural defence mechanisms.

For human health, their potential is considerable. Polyphenols encompass several major families, including flavonoids, phenolic acids, stilbenes, and tannins. Their primary value lies in their antioxidant properties, which have been extensively studied for their potential to protect the body against oxidative stress. By incorporating these active compounds into your formulations—whether for dietary supplements or health nutrition products—you deliver tangible performance and added value to your customers.

While the marketing promise is compelling, the reality of industrial formulation is far more complex. To incorporate polyphenols into capsules, powdered beverages, or functional foods, manufacturers generally start with a liquid extract or suspension that must be converted into a stable dry powder. This is where the real challenge begins.

1. Heat sensitivity: Polyphenols are highly sensitive to thermal stress. An overly aggressive drying process can damage the molecules and significantly reduce their valuable antioxidant activity.
2. Storage stability: In their pure form, these compounds are particularly vulnerable to environmental conditions. Without appropriate protection in dry form, their long-term stability can rapidly decline.
3. Powder handling issues: Raw polyphenol powders are often cohesive. They tend to stick to equipment surfaces, form hard agglomerates, generate dust, and exhibit poor dispersibility and dissolution properties.

Poor control of powder characteristics leads to active ingredient losses, frequent production stoppages for equipment cleaning, and inconsistencies in the final product. Solving these complex formulation challenges is precisely what INNOV’IA’s experts do every day, helping manufacturers transform difficult ingredients into robust, high-performance products.

You have a plant extract in liquid or suspension form. Your objective is to remove the water and obtain a stable powder. Subjecting polyphenols to excessive heat would compromise their functional value. This is where one of INNOV’IA’s core technologies comes into play: spray drying.

The principle is simple: convert a liquid ingredient or suspension into a fine or micro-granulated powder using a process specifically designed to preserve the product’s functional properties throughout the drying operation.

The liquid extract is atomized into microscopic droplets inside a dedicated spray drying tower. As these droplets come into contact with hot air, the water evaporates almost instantly. This ultra-fast evaporation significantly reduces the actual thermal stress experienced by the core of each particle.

At INNOV’IA, our objective is to minimize thermal stress and protect your active ingredients throughout the entire manufacturing process.

Spray drying can be performed with or without a carrier (excipient), depending on your project’s specifications, resulting in a stable powder with optimal preservation of its functional properties. The benefits are immediate: you retain the biological activity of your polyphenols while obtaining a practical, easy-to-handle solid ingredient.

Our La Rochelle production site features state-of-the-art spray drying facilities dedicated to this technology, enabling us to process everything from R&D batches to full-scale industrial production campaigns.

Obtaining a fine powder through spray drying is an excellent first step. However, powders that are too fine often exhibit poor flow properties and generate dust during manufacturing. To eliminate these handling issues, INNOV’IA also offers a complementary technology: fluid bed granulation and agglomeration.

Binder-assisted fluid bed agglomeration consists of suspending powder particles in a controlled upward airflow. While the particles remain fluidized, a carefully selected binder is sprayed onto them, allowing the fine particles to agglomerate uniformly.

This controlled process enables precise particle growth, significantly improving both particle size distribution and the homogeneity of the final ingredient.

In practical terms, this powder engineering strategy delivers significant operational advantages for both manufacturers and end users:

• Improved powder handling: The resulting micro-granules flow smoothly and consistently through packaging and processing equipment, reducing hopper blockages and improving production throughput.
• Enhanced storage stability: The agglomerated structure reduces the surface area exposed to ambient humidity, helping preserve active ingredients over extended storage periods.
• Easier incorporation into food and nutraceutical formulations: The engineered powder exhibits excellent wettability, allowing rapid dispersion and dissolution without lump formation in the final application.
• Tailor-made particle properties: We precisely adjust particle size and bulk density to meet the specific processing and performance requirements of each customer.

Transforming a laboratory innovation into a successful large-scale industrial product requires cutting-edge process expertise and robust manufacturing capabilities. INNOV’IA is one of the few European contract manufacturers able to combine spray drying, fluid bed granulation, and microencapsulation within the same production environment, with manufacturing capacities ranging from pilot-scale batches to several hundred tonnes per year.

With more than 35 years of experience, INNOV’IA has built its reputation on supporting manufacturers throughout the formulation, development, and production of complex, tailor-made functional ingredients. Our strength lies in our ability to guide you through every stage of your project’s lifecycle—from R&D and pilot trials to full-scale industrial manufacturing.

We deliver 100% tailor-made manufacturing solutions, intelligently combining multiple technologies according to your product’s unique technical requirements. Working across different production scales—from pilot workshops to industrial facilities—allows us to fine-tune process parameters based on the thermal and physical sensitivity of your ingredients, ensuring a smooth and reliable scale-up.

Whether your objective is to protect sensitive active ingredients, control their release, improve stability, enhance solubility, or optimize powder handling, INNOV’IA offers a comprehensive portfolio of advanced powder processing technologies.

• Microencapsulation: Protects active ingredients from external factors such as oxygen, moisture, and light while improving product stability.
• Spray drying: Thanks to extremely short exposure times at elevated temperatures, this process rapidly converts liquid ingredients into stable powders while minimizing the risk of thermal degradation.
• Coating and granulation: Improve particle structure, provide surface protection, and optimize powder flow properties.
• Prilling and fluid bed agglomeration: Produce powders with controlled particle size distribution, excellent flowability, and easy dosing characteristics.
• Combined spray drying and microencapsulation: For particularly sensitive active ingredients, we combine both technologies to encapsulate the active compound within a protective matrix (such as maltodextrin or gum arabic), shielding it from heat and oxidation throughout processing and storage.

To deliver flexible, responsive, and consistently high-quality manufacturing services, INNOV’IA relies on state-of-the-art production facilities and highly skilled teams.

• Four production sites located in France, including facilities in La Rochelle and Segré-en-Anjou Bleu.
• A comprehensive production fleet featuring 13 fluid bed units, 8 spray drying towers, and 2 prilling units.
• More than 11,000 tonnes of functional ingredients manufactured every year.
• A workforce of over 370 employees, supported by the Capsulae R&I Innovation Centre in La Rochelle, where more than 35 scientists and formulation experts have been developing encapsulation technologies for over three decades.

Regulatory compliance is essential for successfully bringing products to market. At INNOV’IA, quality, traceability, and product safety are embedded throughout every stage of our manufacturing processes. Our facilities are certified to the highest international standards.

As part of our long-term sustainability strategy, INNOV’IA has invested more than €7 million in modern environmental facilities designed to reduce the environmental footprint of our drying and formulation operations.

Successfully drying and granulating polyphenols is essential for overcoming formulation challenges and unlocking the full potential of these powerful plant-based antioxidants.

By minimizing thermal exposure through spray drying and optimizing particle size with fluid bed agglomeration, you can eliminate manufacturing bottlenecks, improve powder handling, and maximize the long-term stability of your products.

Don’t let unstable or difficult-to-handle powders slow down your innovation projects. Trust INNOV’IA’s industrial expertise to transform your formulations into commercially successful products—from pilot-scale development to full-scale manufacturing.

Ready to unlock the full potential of your polyphenols? Contact one of our experts today for a free technical assessment of your current formulation.