If you work with milk proteins, spices, bread premixes, or nutraceutical blends, you’ve likely faced the challenge: a powder that once flowed easily now forms hard lumps or crusts. This is caking — and in large-scale production it’s more than an inconvenience. Caked powders can block equipment, disrupt dosing, and compromise product quality. While caking doesn’t necessarily mean a powder is unsafe, it often makes processing inefficient, costly, and inconsistent.
Why it matters for manufacturing
The operational consequences include higher energy use, unplanned downtime for equipment cleaning, and increased worker dust exposure during manual de-caking. In nutrition and pharmaceutical production, where dosing precision is critical, reduced flowability can directly impact compliance and quality.
Omya’s mineral-based solutions
Omya offers a portfolio of high-purity, mineral-based anticaking agents and flow aids designed to address these challenges.
Omya Calcipur® / Omya-Cal®: Natural calcium carbonate with optimized particle size and surface properties to increase particle aeration and reduce cohesion, mechanical interlocking and friction.
Omyafood® 120: A porous, low-dusting mineral that actively prevents caking under high-humidity, high-temperature stress conditions.
Omyanutra® 300: A compactable glidant combining calcium carbonate and tribasic calcium phosphate—ideal for nutraceutical blends and pre-workout powders that are moisture-sensitive, high in oil content, or naturally resistant to free flow.
These solutions are effective at low inclusion rates (typically 0.5–4.0%) and compatible with a wide range of powder matrices.
The data behind the solutions
In controlled stress tests simulating high humidity and fluctuating temperatures, Omya mineral-based anticaking agents reduced caking by up to 50% in bread premixes and 35% in spice mixes. Improvements were quantified using industry-standard metrics such as crust depth and caking index.
Functionalized calcium carbonate’s porous, lamellar structure both absorbs moisture and disrupts particle-to-particle bridge formation. In nutraceutical tableting, these materials stabilized processes by reducing variability in tablet hardness, weight, and compression force by 30–50%.
Preventing caking from the start
The most effective approach combines environmental control and formulation strategy. Maintaining stable temperatures, keeping low relative humidity, and using airtight packaging can significantly reduce moisture uptake but increase costs significantly. Adding anticaking agents at the right stage - before extended storage, during blending, or just before packaging — minimizes exposure to caking conditions.
For high-value or sensitive powders, routine flowability testing can detect performance declines early, preventing production disruptions. In addition to improving handling, Omya minerals can also provide nutritional benefits by delivering calcium.
The takeaway
Caking is a persistent issue affecting the flowability and shelf life of food and nutraceutical powders. By understanding the mechanisms — moisture uptake, particle cohesiveness, and process stresses — formulators can select targeted, data-proven solutions that preserve flowability and process efficiency from production to final use.
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