00:07
Speaker 1
Welcome. Glad you're here. I'm Jen Lepore, marketing team coordinator at Custom Processing Services. And today Jeff Klinger, vice president of Custom Processing Services, is stopping by to talk about micronization. So thank you, Jeff, for joining us today. You know, we work with micronization daily, but for your listeners, would you break down some of the essentials and kind of explain a little bit what it is?
00:31
Speaker 2
Sure, I'd be glad to. First of all, micronization is the process of reducing the particle size of a substance to say, the micrometer scale. And a micrometer scales measured in microns. So we process lots of materials that get materials down to single digit microns, three to ten microns. And a micron is really, it's one millionth of a meter or 1, 1000th of a millimeter. To put that in context, the size of a human hair is roughly 70 microns. So that gives you a little bit of an understanding of the size that we reduce particles to. And that's what we call micronization.
01:21
Speaker 1
Okay, so for CPS customers in the food and farm and specialty chemicals often use our micronization service. And I'm sure there are much more, but those are a little bit of the ones that kind of came to my mind. So what would you say makes micronization so important for these applications?
01:41
Speaker 2
Micronization is used in just about every industry that you can think of. The unique thing about micronization is you can create a customized particle size distribution. And with different distributions, different applications can utilize this to their advantage. For instance, there is enhanced solubility, the smaller the particles have increased surface area. And this increased surface area can result in better dissolution in materials. In, say, the pharmaceutical industry, you can have improved bioavailability. This leads to better drug absorption to the body. And in many cases, the difference in particle size will allow the drug to reach different parts of your body that if it wasn't reduced to a very small micron, it wouldn't be able to get there. So there's huge advantages that way.
02:46
Speaker 2
In other applications, in say, industrial type applications, there's better uniformity with a specified particle size distribution that ensures consistent mixing and dispersions in formulations. And oftentimes, if you can reduce a particle a little bit smaller, it allows the material to get into solution a lot faster. So oftentimes smaller particles result in more efficient manufacturing operations. So there's, you know, it gives you capability, but it also gives you efficiency. Lastly, micronized particles in chemical applications can increase reactivity and it's Beneficial in chemical industrial applications where faster reactions are needed. And this is evidence with lithium ion in the battery manufacturing today. So it just allows for much faster reactions.
03:47
Speaker 1
Okay, so you mentioned particle size distribution. You know, how does CPS approach hitting the particle size target?
03:56
Speaker 2
One of the first things we do is we have to evaluate the raw material itself, the characteristics of the raw material. We're going to look at the molecular structure, the density, the hardness, the brittleness, flowability, moisture, particle shape. I mean, there's all kinds of things that we look at before we decide what equipment we'd like to reach the desired particle size from the customer. Oftentimes we might do an impact resistance test right out of the gate. We might hit it with a hammer and see if it's, you know, how brittle it is. Does it stick? Does it not stick? So we want to evaluate the raw material. From there we take our 25 years of history, our product library that we have, and we work hard at selecting the equipment that's necessary in order to hit the desired particle size.
04:50
Speaker 2
So you go from evaluating the raw material, selection of the equipment, and from there we go and we do a product feasibility trial. So we did the work, we did the evaluation, we selected the equipment. Now we run a design of experiments that are, that is necessary for us to hit our desired particle size. Once we do that, we're happy with the conditions that we reach to hit the desired particle size. From there we can go to, you know, production, we can go to a pilot scale to prove out the feasibility and work with our customer that way in order to hit our desired particle size.
05:31
Speaker 1
Great. So you know, you did talk about some equipment. Is there any type of specific equipment that is used for micronization?
05:39
Speaker 2
There's lots of different equipment that we can use. It really depends on the application, depends on what the particle size is, and it also depends on what the raw material structure is. So we can start off by saying jet milling, or some people call it air milling, where we use high speed compressed air at supersonic velocities that creates particle to particle collision that collides and it breaks them down. So it uses particle on particle size reduction using the supersonic velocities of airflow going in the mill. The, so that's jet milling. That's one way to get micronized particles. Another way is wet milling. In wet milling, we mix a dispersion or a slurry that uses grinding media, grinding beads in a rotating chamber to reduce the particle size, product recirculates through the mill numerous times until a desired particle size is met.
06:41
Speaker 2
Typically with this application, we reach the finest materials we can get into sub micron or even nanometer size particles. Another way to reach micronized particles are through mechanical milling. A lot of times in the food industry we use mechanical milling to use high energy impact or friction to achieve fine particles. They may not be quite as fine as jet milling, certainly not as fine as wet milling, but still, they're in a micronized particle category. And I would say lastly, depending on the material, we could use cryogenic micronization where we can use nitrogen and freeze the material before grinding, preventing heat degradation. Basically, we embrittle the material so we can use impact to break the particles down to create micronized particles. Those are the typical ways to reach micronized materials.
07:41
Speaker 1
Wow. Lots of information. So let's talk about compliance. So how strict regulatory standards in just say pharma followed during micronization? How strict are they?
07:58
Speaker 2
If you're talking pharma, I mean, you have strict adherence number one to EH and S standards. You have to make sure that your environmental, your health and your safety regulations are up to speed. No one's going to do business with you unless you have that squared away. And naturally then you have to abide by FDA and GMP guidelines. The federal government provides those and you must follow those to a T when you're doing a brand new product. We need to do a cleaning validation of the equipment and the room. We have to do a process validation with this. You have to write different protocols for the cleaning validations. You have to write protocols and design of experiments for validating the overall process. So this is critical before you start producing a pharmaceutical type material in a commercialized atmosphere.
09:02
Speaker 2
We want to make sure that throughout the process that we design a process that does not compromise the product quality, the safety or the efficacy of the material. And lastly, when you're talking a pharmaceutical or food grade type product, detailed documentation is absolutely paramount. You must have complete traceability of all the raw materials that go into to the product. You have to have documentation from the very beginning of the raw material analysis and acceptance all the way through to the shipment of product to the customer. So these are the regulatory areas that must be, you know, must be in compliance before doing any type of, you know, pharmaceutical type material.
09:45
Speaker 1
So, you know, that brings up another heavily regulated application. Electric vehicle batteries. You kind of brought that up a little bit earlier. Not too long ago, we had our director of engineering, Carl Ferrini on the podcast Talking at length about EV and lithium ion batteries. And we touched on the expense and sometimes the scarcity of the minerals needed for these batteries. So yield is important. How does micronization maximize the yield?
10:17
Speaker 2
Micronization involves, I would think, a couple different ways to impact yield. Number one, the smaller the particles, the increased surface area of the particles in of itself allows less raw material to be used in an overall process and application, so you get the finer particles. Increased surface area saves money on raw material use. So right there, from a yield perspective, that's a big advantage to have a micro knife product. Secondly, we have, when we're jet milling and classifying one machine like we do at our facility, then that in of itself gives you an improved yield. You're not using two different processes, you're doing jet milling and classifying to reach the desired particle size in one step. And that's real important to maximize the yield of the overall product.
11:16
Speaker 2
The other thing that we do from a micronization standpoint is we use what's called a single point collection system. Other processors might have a milling step, they take it to a cyclone and then a, a dust collector, a product dust collector for the fines. They have two points of collection with only one collection is good for the yield. The other is a waste stream. So single point collection in the micronization process, the way we do it, allows for no waste stream generated by say maybe a cyclone that might be in line with another system.
11:52
Speaker 2
And lastly, when you have particle to particle collision and you process that way in say in a jet mill, you have no mechanical parts in there, no other areas where material can build up and be wasteful and have a less of a yield than the way we do it with our jet milling process, with our particle to particle collision. So micronizing in this way really minimizes the waste stream and maximizes the overall yield.
12:23
Speaker 1
Great. So let's take it another step. So let's talk about materials. What materials are generally ideal for micronizing? Are there specific ones?
12:36
Speaker 2
Just look around the room you're in. I mean, just about everything, you know, in all industries can utilize micronization. I guess we've been talking a lot about pharma, so let's talk about that just for a little bit. Drugs we mentioned, you know, absorption to the body is, so any type of drug that is micronized is going to be a big advantage. So you know, for instance, we've done some ibuprofen here at our facility. So you know, that can be micronized inhaled medications. You know, to inhale a medication, they have to be really fine. Well, micronization can do that. Vitamins, zinc oxides, plant based extracts, proteins such as we can do like corn starches and wheat. These are all types of materials that are good in that industry for micronization.
13:33
Speaker 2
If we're talking industrial and chemical powders, we happen to do a lot of ingredients that go into paints, inks, dyes, different coatings, materials such as polyethylenes, polypropylene. I mean, if you take a ballpoint pen, I don't have one with me. But if we, if you take a ballpoint pen and you know, these waxes, these fine micronized waxes allows the ink to flow through the ballpoint without smearing. I mean, it's amazing what these products can do and what they're used for. One wouldn't think that, but that's what it's used for. Different polymers and metals are used for 3D printing. So I mean, 3D printing is, you know, is being utilized all over the world right now. Well, you need micronized materials such as different polymers and different metals in order to do 3D printing.
14:30
Speaker 2
Resins, glass, ceramics, ceramic based materials, these are all ideal for micronizing. An example that I would use is, I mean, if you think about sandpaper comes in all different grits. You can have like a, you know, a 600 grit. Sandpaper is really fine. Well, you need finely micronized particles in order to make that sandpaper. You need larger particles, larger distribution to make the coarser grits. But then there's the adhesive that goes to apply the grit to the paper. All of these adhesives and these different products all use micronized materials to put the product together. I mean, it's, it's just used everywhere. It's, it's amazing.
15:15
Speaker 1
Oh, wow. So are there any types of characteristics that might make a material difficult to process?
15:24
Speaker 2
Definitely. And this is where the challenges come in. Right. So I mean, if it's difficult to do, we're going to do it. So there's lots of examples. But typically difficult products to process are those materials that have a high tensile strength or a long polymer chain, such as some nylon type products. Hydroscopic moisture absorbing materials, you know, they, you know, they don't flow, they build up in the equipment. It's just very difficult to process materials that have a lot of moisture in them. Elastomeric type materials, such as rubber elastomers, they can be very challenging to micronize. Now, you can freeze them and you can do it cryogenically, potentially. But, you know, they're very difficult. And I would say explosive and highly combustible materials, they're very dangerous. Right. So they become, they're challenging.
16:26
Speaker 2
You have to use inert air, inert gas in order to process some of them. But it becomes very challenging.
16:35
Speaker 1
So are there any materials that are just simply no gos, no. Not doing it or avoiding it?
16:45
Speaker 2
Sure. I think that it's similar to the difficult or challenging products. So I would say, you know, a no go are products that are highly viscous, really oily substance, sticky materials. I mean, just clogs up the equipment. It just, you have to have flow. Right. So anything that impedes flow, it's not going to be effective in the micronization process. You know, if it is truly highly explosive or highly reactive materials, they present major safety obstacles when milling these powders. You know, try to elute to try to micronize. Aluminum powder can be very explosive. It can be done, but you need a separate facility to do it. And it's. For us, those types of materials is a no go in this facility.
17:40
Speaker 2
And then highly elastic or ductile materials such as rubber and elastomers that I mentioned a little bit earlier, if they're too elastic, if they're, you know, if the rubber is too soft, you can't micronize those again unless you freeze them. And maybe you can achieve some success. But I would say those would be the no gos. Yeah, most nylon products too, some of them. You know, a lot of nylon products are just too difficult to grind, I would say certainly economically interesting.
18:19
Speaker 1
So taking all that we talked about into consideration, it's pretty easy to see that outsourcing micronization can be a big decision for manufacturers. So what do you think sets CPS apart in this type of space?
18:36
Speaker 2
It's our technical mastery. I mean, a couple years ago, several years ago, I don't know how many we did a rebranding and we pulled all of our customers and we asked them what was, you know, what do you like about us the most? What sets us apart from other companies similar to us. And everything came back to is your technical understanding, your technical expertise, your innovative approach to solving our problems. And when we got that feedback when were rebranding, we changed our tagline to architects of what's possible. So that is one of the Biggest things that sets us apart. But also I would like to say that the various types of our size reduction equipment and you know, our one stop shop capability, we can do all of these things that I mentioned.
19:30
Speaker 2
We can cryogenic grind, we can wet grind, we can dry grind. So we can take these steps and go from a coarser to a finer to nanometer size. And having that kind of one stop shop, having that capability, all the different types of equipment necessary to reduce the particle size to the micronized size the customer desires, it's a real advantage for us. And I, I think our forte and what has enabled us to grow and it's probably the engine that fuels our entire business is our technical sales engineering process. It's the differentiator for us where we can take a concept a, a new product that a customer provides for us and we can take it from concept feasibility all the way through to commercialization and create a product for our customers that is an economically viable solution.
20:33
Speaker 2
And having our engineers to be able to take it from beginning all the way to the end is something completely different than a lot of other people do not do. We have schooled engineers that all they do is work with new product development. It's not part of our production team. It is our product development team that puts all this together for us, works with our customers and that's really the fuel that is what drives our business. I would also say customization and flexibility we have, we can produce into any type of package. We'll customize labeling for our customers. I mean custom processing services offers customization and flexibility. Certainly we're innovative. We've got 25 years of experience. We have a library of success stories and products that we can review and utilize that for our new product development.
21:35
Speaker 2
It is just, you know, one good example is we took a mechanical milling process of cellulose and we converted it to jet milling process. It's much more efficient, it's cleaner. It was a difficult process to keep flowing because it's hydroscopic. We were able to do this in a very clean environment much more efficiently. I mean having that kind of innovation and expertise is, is a differentiator for us. Finally, our end to end service. Yes, we can develop a new product, but it's being able to have value add. We have really good material analysis, we have, you know, a good test lab, we have analytical lab with all kinds of different equipment that we can do characterization and testing of materials. Our logistics, we have A trucking company. It's the total experience for us. We can take it from the beginning to the end.
22:34
Speaker 2
And really our people know it's their job to make our customer contact very successful in all aspects of our business with them. I think this is what sets us apart from the rest.
22:49
Speaker 1
Yep, I'll have to agree with you on that. So can you recall a project where our micronization capabilities help solve a particularly tough challenge for a customer and what kind of happened?
23:02
Speaker 2
One I can think of is a calcium silicate material. Calcium silicate is, it's a needle like product, it's acicular in nature. And our customer, they were doing this on some mechanical mill and it's very abrasive. So the product was blasting holes through the equipment. It was a slow process. They're having a difficult time keeping the product conformity. They needed a has to be a specific aspect ratio along with particle size. So the two of them were difficult to meet. So we had to go through a lot of testing and a lot of different, you know, design of experiments before we came up with a nice solution. So we ended up using a jet milling operation, but we kind of, were using the equipment outside of design in order to reach the customer's end and desired results.
24:06
Speaker 2
So were able to produce the raw material to the proper particle size to keep the needle like aspect ratio that was necessary because it's very abrasive. You can have metal pickup and discolor it. But were working with particle to particle collision with ceramic lined mills and were able to create a beautiful clean, white, contamination free product all while maintaining particle size and the aspect ratio. So we're able to do this at an economically viable rate as well. So it was a very good example for us to work through a process like that. And we later found that our customer tried to do this exact same product at the oem. Of the equipment that were using, the OEM couldn't figure it out.
25:01
Speaker 2
So it's really a credit to the innovation and to our technical team that we can, you know, utilize what tools we have and our expertise to come up with an end result.
25:12
Speaker 1
Wow, great story. So let's say a manufacturer is looking to outsource micronization. What do you think? A couple things you tell them to prioritize when evaluating potential toll processing partners.
25:27
Speaker 2
You know, you have to realize what product are you looking to have processed. So if for some reason it's a GMP food or pharmaceutical type product. Now one of the first things you Want to look for, you know, do they have the regulatory, you know, certifications, you know that they need to process these materials? Do they have the FDA and CGMP certifications, ISO9001, FSSC22000, which is food safety? You know, what do the EH&S records look like? So whenever we have a big customer come, they're the first thing they're doing. They're checking out our regulatory, they're checking out our safety. So I would recommend doing the same thing, make sure that those areas are all up to speed. I think I would look at the technical capabilities of a total processor. What type of equipment do they have? What sizes of equipment are available?
26:25
Speaker 2
Certainly you need to ask about contamination and cross batch control prevention. In our business we're going from one product to the next. If you don't have really good system and processes in place to make sure you maintain contamination free product, you're going to run into problems. So that, you know, cross batch control is very important for contamination control. You want to evaluate product conformity testing capabilities. What kind of analytical lab do they have? Do they have to send, you know, product out to be tested or do they have the testing capability in house? I mean, it's real important to have that available. I would inquire about, you know, product yield. You mentioned that a little bit earlier in the discussion. Product yields are important to customers. It's all about money. The more product you get back, the more value added is.
27:22
Speaker 2
So that's also important. You want to look at lead times, you want to look at customer service, logistics support, transportation. We offer all those things. We offer storage, we offer. We have our in house trucking company to transport back and forth to help out. Obviously we have customer service. You want to look at the toller's reputation, what value add do they have? What is the overall experience like doing business with this particular toller? And I would say lastly, you would need to find a balance between compliance, quality, cost and efficiency.
28:02
Speaker 1
Great. So as we wrap up, I'd like to kind of give you, Jeff, a chance to share any additional thoughts that you'd like to share with our audience that maybe we didn't get a chance to really address. So is there anything, you know, with.
28:17
Speaker 2
A Micronizer contract manufacturer toll processor such as us? I think it's real important that you pick a toll pot processing partner that you consider is an extension of your own manufacturing facility. And I think if when you get done your entire evaluation, if you can say that they are an extension of your manufacturing facility, then you've chosen the right partner.
28:48
Speaker 1
That's great. Perfect way to end it. So, Jeff, this has been a great conversation, and I really do appreciate you taking the time to sit down with me. And thanks to all of you for watching this month's Custom Processing Services Toll Manufacturer Minute. If you have any more questions about CPS's micronization services, just reach out to our team at any time. Also, be sure to subscribe to our CPS blog to rewatch or catch up with our episodes and get the latest news and insights from all of our experts like Jeff. So we'll catch you next time. Thank you.
Speaker 1
Welcome. Glad you're here. I'm Jen Lepore, marketing team coordinator at Custom Processing Services. And today Jeff Klinger, vice president of Custom Processing Services, is stopping by to talk about micronization. So thank you, Jeff, for joining us today. You know, we work with micronization daily, but for your listeners, would you break down some of the essentials and kind of explain a little bit what it is?
00:31
Speaker 2
Sure, I'd be glad to. First of all, micronization is the process of reducing the particle size of a substance to say, the micrometer scale. And a micrometer scales measured in microns. So we process lots of materials that get materials down to single digit microns, three to ten microns. And a micron is really, it's one millionth of a meter or 1, 1000th of a millimeter. To put that in context, the size of a human hair is roughly 70 microns. So that gives you a little bit of an understanding of the size that we reduce particles to. And that's what we call micronization.
01:21
Speaker 1
Okay, so for CPS customers in the food and farm and specialty chemicals often use our micronization service. And I'm sure there are much more, but those are a little bit of the ones that kind of came to my mind. So what would you say makes micronization so important for these applications?
01:41
Speaker 2
Micronization is used in just about every industry that you can think of. The unique thing about micronization is you can create a customized particle size distribution. And with different distributions, different applications can utilize this to their advantage. For instance, there is enhanced solubility, the smaller the particles have increased surface area. And this increased surface area can result in better dissolution in materials. In, say, the pharmaceutical industry, you can have improved bioavailability. This leads to better drug absorption to the body. And in many cases, the difference in particle size will allow the drug to reach different parts of your body that if it wasn't reduced to a very small micron, it wouldn't be able to get there. So there's huge advantages that way.
02:46
Speaker 2
In other applications, in say, industrial type applications, there's better uniformity with a specified particle size distribution that ensures consistent mixing and dispersions in formulations. And oftentimes, if you can reduce a particle a little bit smaller, it allows the material to get into solution a lot faster. So oftentimes smaller particles result in more efficient manufacturing operations. So there's, you know, it gives you capability, but it also gives you efficiency. Lastly, micronized particles in chemical applications can increase reactivity and it's Beneficial in chemical industrial applications where faster reactions are needed. And this is evidence with lithium ion in the battery manufacturing today. So it just allows for much faster reactions.
03:47
Speaker 1
Okay, so you mentioned particle size distribution. You know, how does CPS approach hitting the particle size target?
03:56
Speaker 2
One of the first things we do is we have to evaluate the raw material itself, the characteristics of the raw material. We're going to look at the molecular structure, the density, the hardness, the brittleness, flowability, moisture, particle shape. I mean, there's all kinds of things that we look at before we decide what equipment we'd like to reach the desired particle size from the customer. Oftentimes we might do an impact resistance test right out of the gate. We might hit it with a hammer and see if it's, you know, how brittle it is. Does it stick? Does it not stick? So we want to evaluate the raw material. From there we take our 25 years of history, our product library that we have, and we work hard at selecting the equipment that's necessary in order to hit the desired particle size.
04:50
Speaker 2
So you go from evaluating the raw material, selection of the equipment, and from there we go and we do a product feasibility trial. So we did the work, we did the evaluation, we selected the equipment. Now we run a design of experiments that are, that is necessary for us to hit our desired particle size. Once we do that, we're happy with the conditions that we reach to hit the desired particle size. From there we can go to, you know, production, we can go to a pilot scale to prove out the feasibility and work with our customer that way in order to hit our desired particle size.
05:31
Speaker 1
Great. So you know, you did talk about some equipment. Is there any type of specific equipment that is used for micronization?
05:39
Speaker 2
There's lots of different equipment that we can use. It really depends on the application, depends on what the particle size is, and it also depends on what the raw material structure is. So we can start off by saying jet milling, or some people call it air milling, where we use high speed compressed air at supersonic velocities that creates particle to particle collision that collides and it breaks them down. So it uses particle on particle size reduction using the supersonic velocities of airflow going in the mill. The, so that's jet milling. That's one way to get micronized particles. Another way is wet milling. In wet milling, we mix a dispersion or a slurry that uses grinding media, grinding beads in a rotating chamber to reduce the particle size, product recirculates through the mill numerous times until a desired particle size is met.
06:41
Speaker 2
Typically with this application, we reach the finest materials we can get into sub micron or even nanometer size particles. Another way to reach micronized particles are through mechanical milling. A lot of times in the food industry we use mechanical milling to use high energy impact or friction to achieve fine particles. They may not be quite as fine as jet milling, certainly not as fine as wet milling, but still, they're in a micronized particle category. And I would say lastly, depending on the material, we could use cryogenic micronization where we can use nitrogen and freeze the material before grinding, preventing heat degradation. Basically, we embrittle the material so we can use impact to break the particles down to create micronized particles. Those are the typical ways to reach micronized materials.
07:41
Speaker 1
Wow. Lots of information. So let's talk about compliance. So how strict regulatory standards in just say pharma followed during micronization? How strict are they?
07:58
Speaker 2
If you're talking pharma, I mean, you have strict adherence number one to EH and S standards. You have to make sure that your environmental, your health and your safety regulations are up to speed. No one's going to do business with you unless you have that squared away. And naturally then you have to abide by FDA and GMP guidelines. The federal government provides those and you must follow those to a T when you're doing a brand new product. We need to do a cleaning validation of the equipment and the room. We have to do a process validation with this. You have to write different protocols for the cleaning validations. You have to write protocols and design of experiments for validating the overall process. So this is critical before you start producing a pharmaceutical type material in a commercialized atmosphere.
09:02
Speaker 2
We want to make sure that throughout the process that we design a process that does not compromise the product quality, the safety or the efficacy of the material. And lastly, when you're talking a pharmaceutical or food grade type product, detailed documentation is absolutely paramount. You must have complete traceability of all the raw materials that go into to the product. You have to have documentation from the very beginning of the raw material analysis and acceptance all the way through to the shipment of product to the customer. So these are the regulatory areas that must be, you know, must be in compliance before doing any type of, you know, pharmaceutical type material.
09:45
Speaker 1
So, you know, that brings up another heavily regulated application. Electric vehicle batteries. You kind of brought that up a little bit earlier. Not too long ago, we had our director of engineering, Carl Ferrini on the podcast Talking at length about EV and lithium ion batteries. And we touched on the expense and sometimes the scarcity of the minerals needed for these batteries. So yield is important. How does micronization maximize the yield?
10:17
Speaker 2
Micronization involves, I would think, a couple different ways to impact yield. Number one, the smaller the particles, the increased surface area of the particles in of itself allows less raw material to be used in an overall process and application, so you get the finer particles. Increased surface area saves money on raw material use. So right there, from a yield perspective, that's a big advantage to have a micro knife product. Secondly, we have, when we're jet milling and classifying one machine like we do at our facility, then that in of itself gives you an improved yield. You're not using two different processes, you're doing jet milling and classifying to reach the desired particle size in one step. And that's real important to maximize the yield of the overall product.
11:16
Speaker 2
The other thing that we do from a micronization standpoint is we use what's called a single point collection system. Other processors might have a milling step, they take it to a cyclone and then a, a dust collector, a product dust collector for the fines. They have two points of collection with only one collection is good for the yield. The other is a waste stream. So single point collection in the micronization process, the way we do it, allows for no waste stream generated by say maybe a cyclone that might be in line with another system.
11:52
Speaker 2
And lastly, when you have particle to particle collision and you process that way in say in a jet mill, you have no mechanical parts in there, no other areas where material can build up and be wasteful and have a less of a yield than the way we do it with our jet milling process, with our particle to particle collision. So micronizing in this way really minimizes the waste stream and maximizes the overall yield.
12:23
Speaker 1
Great. So let's take it another step. So let's talk about materials. What materials are generally ideal for micronizing? Are there specific ones?
12:36
Speaker 2
Just look around the room you're in. I mean, just about everything, you know, in all industries can utilize micronization. I guess we've been talking a lot about pharma, so let's talk about that just for a little bit. Drugs we mentioned, you know, absorption to the body is, so any type of drug that is micronized is going to be a big advantage. So you know, for instance, we've done some ibuprofen here at our facility. So you know, that can be micronized inhaled medications. You know, to inhale a medication, they have to be really fine. Well, micronization can do that. Vitamins, zinc oxides, plant based extracts, proteins such as we can do like corn starches and wheat. These are all types of materials that are good in that industry for micronization.
13:33
Speaker 2
If we're talking industrial and chemical powders, we happen to do a lot of ingredients that go into paints, inks, dyes, different coatings, materials such as polyethylenes, polypropylene. I mean, if you take a ballpoint pen, I don't have one with me. But if we, if you take a ballpoint pen and you know, these waxes, these fine micronized waxes allows the ink to flow through the ballpoint without smearing. I mean, it's amazing what these products can do and what they're used for. One wouldn't think that, but that's what it's used for. Different polymers and metals are used for 3D printing. So I mean, 3D printing is, you know, is being utilized all over the world right now. Well, you need micronized materials such as different polymers and different metals in order to do 3D printing.
14:30
Speaker 2
Resins, glass, ceramics, ceramic based materials, these are all ideal for micronizing. An example that I would use is, I mean, if you think about sandpaper comes in all different grits. You can have like a, you know, a 600 grit. Sandpaper is really fine. Well, you need finely micronized particles in order to make that sandpaper. You need larger particles, larger distribution to make the coarser grits. But then there's the adhesive that goes to apply the grit to the paper. All of these adhesives and these different products all use micronized materials to put the product together. I mean, it's, it's just used everywhere. It's, it's amazing.
15:15
Speaker 1
Oh, wow. So are there any types of characteristics that might make a material difficult to process?
15:24
Speaker 2
Definitely. And this is where the challenges come in. Right. So I mean, if it's difficult to do, we're going to do it. So there's lots of examples. But typically difficult products to process are those materials that have a high tensile strength or a long polymer chain, such as some nylon type products. Hydroscopic moisture absorbing materials, you know, they, you know, they don't flow, they build up in the equipment. It's just very difficult to process materials that have a lot of moisture in them. Elastomeric type materials, such as rubber elastomers, they can be very challenging to micronize. Now, you can freeze them and you can do it cryogenically, potentially. But, you know, they're very difficult. And I would say explosive and highly combustible materials, they're very dangerous. Right. So they become, they're challenging.
16:26
Speaker 2
You have to use inert air, inert gas in order to process some of them. But it becomes very challenging.
16:35
Speaker 1
So are there any materials that are just simply no gos, no. Not doing it or avoiding it?
16:45
Speaker 2
Sure. I think that it's similar to the difficult or challenging products. So I would say, you know, a no go are products that are highly viscous, really oily substance, sticky materials. I mean, just clogs up the equipment. It just, you have to have flow. Right. So anything that impedes flow, it's not going to be effective in the micronization process. You know, if it is truly highly explosive or highly reactive materials, they present major safety obstacles when milling these powders. You know, try to elute to try to micronize. Aluminum powder can be very explosive. It can be done, but you need a separate facility to do it. And it's. For us, those types of materials is a no go in this facility.
17:40
Speaker 2
And then highly elastic or ductile materials such as rubber and elastomers that I mentioned a little bit earlier, if they're too elastic, if they're, you know, if the rubber is too soft, you can't micronize those again unless you freeze them. And maybe you can achieve some success. But I would say those would be the no gos. Yeah, most nylon products too, some of them. You know, a lot of nylon products are just too difficult to grind, I would say certainly economically interesting.
18:19
Speaker 1
So taking all that we talked about into consideration, it's pretty easy to see that outsourcing micronization can be a big decision for manufacturers. So what do you think sets CPS apart in this type of space?
18:36
Speaker 2
It's our technical mastery. I mean, a couple years ago, several years ago, I don't know how many we did a rebranding and we pulled all of our customers and we asked them what was, you know, what do you like about us the most? What sets us apart from other companies similar to us. And everything came back to is your technical understanding, your technical expertise, your innovative approach to solving our problems. And when we got that feedback when were rebranding, we changed our tagline to architects of what's possible. So that is one of the Biggest things that sets us apart. But also I would like to say that the various types of our size reduction equipment and you know, our one stop shop capability, we can do all of these things that I mentioned.
19:30
Speaker 2
We can cryogenic grind, we can wet grind, we can dry grind. So we can take these steps and go from a coarser to a finer to nanometer size. And having that kind of one stop shop, having that capability, all the different types of equipment necessary to reduce the particle size to the micronized size the customer desires, it's a real advantage for us. And I, I think our forte and what has enabled us to grow and it's probably the engine that fuels our entire business is our technical sales engineering process. It's the differentiator for us where we can take a concept a, a new product that a customer provides for us and we can take it from concept feasibility all the way through to commercialization and create a product for our customers that is an economically viable solution.
20:33
Speaker 2
And having our engineers to be able to take it from beginning all the way to the end is something completely different than a lot of other people do not do. We have schooled engineers that all they do is work with new product development. It's not part of our production team. It is our product development team that puts all this together for us, works with our customers and that's really the fuel that is what drives our business. I would also say customization and flexibility we have, we can produce into any type of package. We'll customize labeling for our customers. I mean custom processing services offers customization and flexibility. Certainly we're innovative. We've got 25 years of experience. We have a library of success stories and products that we can review and utilize that for our new product development.
21:35
Speaker 2
It is just, you know, one good example is we took a mechanical milling process of cellulose and we converted it to jet milling process. It's much more efficient, it's cleaner. It was a difficult process to keep flowing because it's hydroscopic. We were able to do this in a very clean environment much more efficiently. I mean having that kind of innovation and expertise is, is a differentiator for us. Finally, our end to end service. Yes, we can develop a new product, but it's being able to have value add. We have really good material analysis, we have, you know, a good test lab, we have analytical lab with all kinds of different equipment that we can do characterization and testing of materials. Our logistics, we have A trucking company. It's the total experience for us. We can take it from the beginning to the end.
22:34
Speaker 2
And really our people know it's their job to make our customer contact very successful in all aspects of our business with them. I think this is what sets us apart from the rest.
22:49
Speaker 1
Yep, I'll have to agree with you on that. So can you recall a project where our micronization capabilities help solve a particularly tough challenge for a customer and what kind of happened?
23:02
Speaker 2
One I can think of is a calcium silicate material. Calcium silicate is, it's a needle like product, it's acicular in nature. And our customer, they were doing this on some mechanical mill and it's very abrasive. So the product was blasting holes through the equipment. It was a slow process. They're having a difficult time keeping the product conformity. They needed a has to be a specific aspect ratio along with particle size. So the two of them were difficult to meet. So we had to go through a lot of testing and a lot of different, you know, design of experiments before we came up with a nice solution. So we ended up using a jet milling operation, but we kind of, were using the equipment outside of design in order to reach the customer's end and desired results.
24:06
Speaker 2
So were able to produce the raw material to the proper particle size to keep the needle like aspect ratio that was necessary because it's very abrasive. You can have metal pickup and discolor it. But were working with particle to particle collision with ceramic lined mills and were able to create a beautiful clean, white, contamination free product all while maintaining particle size and the aspect ratio. So we're able to do this at an economically viable rate as well. So it was a very good example for us to work through a process like that. And we later found that our customer tried to do this exact same product at the oem. Of the equipment that were using, the OEM couldn't figure it out.
25:01
Speaker 2
So it's really a credit to the innovation and to our technical team that we can, you know, utilize what tools we have and our expertise to come up with an end result.
25:12
Speaker 1
Wow, great story. So let's say a manufacturer is looking to outsource micronization. What do you think? A couple things you tell them to prioritize when evaluating potential toll processing partners.
25:27
Speaker 2
You know, you have to realize what product are you looking to have processed. So if for some reason it's a GMP food or pharmaceutical type product. Now one of the first things you Want to look for, you know, do they have the regulatory, you know, certifications, you know that they need to process these materials? Do they have the FDA and CGMP certifications, ISO9001, FSSC22000, which is food safety? You know, what do the EH&S records look like? So whenever we have a big customer come, they're the first thing they're doing. They're checking out our regulatory, they're checking out our safety. So I would recommend doing the same thing, make sure that those areas are all up to speed. I think I would look at the technical capabilities of a total processor. What type of equipment do they have? What sizes of equipment are available?
26:25
Speaker 2
Certainly you need to ask about contamination and cross batch control prevention. In our business we're going from one product to the next. If you don't have really good system and processes in place to make sure you maintain contamination free product, you're going to run into problems. So that, you know, cross batch control is very important for contamination control. You want to evaluate product conformity testing capabilities. What kind of analytical lab do they have? Do they have to send, you know, product out to be tested or do they have the testing capability in house? I mean, it's real important to have that available. I would inquire about, you know, product yield. You mentioned that a little bit earlier in the discussion. Product yields are important to customers. It's all about money. The more product you get back, the more value added is.
27:22
Speaker 2
So that's also important. You want to look at lead times, you want to look at customer service, logistics support, transportation. We offer all those things. We offer storage, we offer. We have our in house trucking company to transport back and forth to help out. Obviously we have customer service. You want to look at the toller's reputation, what value add do they have? What is the overall experience like doing business with this particular toller? And I would say lastly, you would need to find a balance between compliance, quality, cost and efficiency.
28:02
Speaker 1
Great. So as we wrap up, I'd like to kind of give you, Jeff, a chance to share any additional thoughts that you'd like to share with our audience that maybe we didn't get a chance to really address. So is there anything, you know, with.
28:17
Speaker 2
A Micronizer contract manufacturer toll processor such as us? I think it's real important that you pick a toll pot processing partner that you consider is an extension of your own manufacturing facility. And I think if when you get done your entire evaluation, if you can say that they are an extension of your manufacturing facility, then you've chosen the right partner.
28:48
Speaker 1
That's great. Perfect way to end it. So, Jeff, this has been a great conversation, and I really do appreciate you taking the time to sit down with me. And thanks to all of you for watching this month's Custom Processing Services Toll Manufacturer Minute. If you have any more questions about CPS's micronization services, just reach out to our team at any time. Also, be sure to subscribe to our CPS blog to rewatch or catch up with our episodes and get the latest news and insights from all of our experts like Jeff. So we'll catch you next time. Thank you.
