Oral dissolving strips
Discover the future of nutritional supplements with orally dissolvable films—an innovative, hassle-free way to take your nutrients! These sleek and convenient strips melt effortlessly on your tongue, are quickly absorbed, and are extremely convenient, requiring no water or bulky packaging. Perfect for on-the-go, this innovative delivery method revolutionizes how you take your daily wellness essentials.
Composition
The orally soluble strips contain only natural ingredients and are free from fillers, sugar, gluten, soy, and allergens.
Polymers such as pullulan, hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HMPC), and pectin
Softeners such as vegetable glycerin
Saliva-stimulating ingredients such as citric acid
Natural colors, sweeteners, flavorings
Active ingredients
Production facility
The US-based, NSF-certified plant has five production lines.
Active ingredients
Active ingredients make up less than 1% to 30% of the film. These depend entirely on the films we manufacture. Ideally, they are based on water, oil, or alcohol (or are soluble). To achieve a uniform composition and produce a smooth film, the active ingredients must dissolve. As Nutrastrips is a manufacturer of nutraceuticals, we cannot produce products with OTC or RX ingredients.
Polymers
Polymers provide the structure and strength of the strip. We use pullulan (a naturally derived polymer) and occasionally cellulose is needed for additional reinforcement. The polymer accounts for 30 to 60% of the final weight.
Plasticizers
Depending on the formula we produce, plasticizers make up 0.2% to 10% of the strip. Some of the plasticizers we use are vegetable glycerin and polyethylene glycol. Plasticizers give the strips structure, tensile strength, etc.
Saliva-stimulating ingredients
Saliva-stimulating ingredients such as citric acid are used not only to stimulate saliva flow, which promotes rapid dissolution, but also to mask the bitterness of the active ingredients. We typically add less than one percent citric acid to achieve these goals.
Flavors, colorants, sweeteners, other
Color, sweetener, flavor, other We use natural colorants such as turmeric, spirulina, annatto seeds, etc. to add color to some of our recipes. Stevia (RebM) is used as a sweetener to give the film a natural sweetness. Various flavors (almost always natural, organic flavors are used). We have achieved the best results with mint, citrus, and berry/fruit flavors. Combining flavors with stevia and citric acid has resulted in tasty mouth strips. We have also found that adding colors that match the flavor provides a better experience for the user. There are also certain formulations that require a surfactant to combine oil and water components, for example in the production of cannabinoid-enriched strips. In these cases, lecithin is used.
Preparation and mixing
Nutrastrips combines all ingredients into a slurry before rolling it into a film. We take special care to combine the ingredients in such a way as to ensure even distribution, i.e., we dissolve the active ingredients and other ingredients step by step to ensure homogeneity. This multi-stage process promotes the uniformity of the ingredients and reduces the risk of problems later on. Once all ingredients are mixed and blended, the homogenizer is placed under vacuum to remove air pockets in the strip. Our vacuum homogenizer reduces atmospheric pressure to – 0.09 MPa. This process allows us to produce strips without excess air bubbles. This enables us to produce smooth, even, and homogeneous strips.
Pouring, cutting, and packaging
Once the slurry has been sufficiently mixed and extracted, we transfer it (gradually) from the homogenizer to the film production machine. This machine looks similar to a pizza oven. However, instead of a tray full of pizzas, there is a 35 cm wide PET roll that guides the wet slurry through the oven. At the beginning of the oven, there are two large rollers that are about 0.5 mm apart. When we put the slurry into the feed station, the rollers are activated to transport the slurry onto the PET film and through the oven. The oven temperature is usually set to 60 to 80 degrees Celsius.
The speed is then set and the slurry is transported through the oven so that it dehydrates to the desired consistency. We aim for a film that is sufficiently dry, but not so dry that it breaks and tears before packaging. A moisture content of 10% on the strip is an ideal result. When the strip comes out of the oven, we check the consistency, thickness, and moisture content and adjust the temperature and rolling speed as needed. Once the last batch has passed through the oven, the next step is cutting and packaging. Our packaging machine separates the film from the PET, cuts it into 2.5 cm wide strips, and shreds it to the desired length.
Our strips are usually cut to a length of 3 to 5 cm. The length is usually determined by the amount of active ingredient we want to have in the finished strip. Immediately after cutting, the cut strip is placed in its bag and sealed. The entire process from start to finished, packaged strip takes 24 hours. Once the strips are packaged in their individual bags, we can pack the bags into ready-to-sell packaging and ship them to the customer.
Would you like to convert an existing product into strips or develop a new product?
