Fluid Energy's New Small Scale Powder Processing R&D Laboratory Offers Alternative to Expensive In-House Product Development & Testing

TELFORD, Pa (PRWeb) March 1, 2007 -- Fluid Energy, the world leader in powder processing solutions, today announced the opening of a new "lab to pilot" processing facility at their Telford location. The new laboratory is built to provide clients with small batch powder processing services for research and development and make for an easy transition to pilot scale and production scale processing.

"This new program allows us to better serve our clients' R&D and product testing needs," said Jeffrey Gutkind, director of sales and marketing at Fluid Energy. "What we're doing is providing clients with an alternative to bringing product testing, research and development, and pilot scale production in-house."

The cost of setting up a product testing and research powder processing lab can be a limiting factor in the development of new products for most small and mid-size manufacturers. Building a controlled clean room environment fitted-out with jet milling and powder processing equipment simply is not in the budget for many companies.

Gutkind expects that clients in the pharmaceutical, hazardous materials, and food processing industries will benefit most from the new services available through the new lab to pilot program.

"Many customers have inquired about small batch testing services prior to production runs and, until now, we did not have the proper facilities to comply with their requests," said Gretchen Vanderford, Fluid Energy's lab manager. "All of the right tools are now in place, including our clean room, two complete production milling stations, and a development lab suite."

Services now being offered under Fluid Energy's new lab to pilot program include basic grinding and mixing, blending, coating, milling, and packaging. The lab offers clients the ability to test products with batches as small as 1 gram of material and scale it up to pilot scale, usually between 50-5,000 pounds. Following the pilot scale processing, Fluid Energy's production facility offers production scale services for larger batches of up to one million pounds.

"We assist our customers in their decision making process," said Vanderford. "This unique location will allow customers to take advantage of our expertise in powder processing research and product development, enabling them to make critical decisions before scaling up to production."

"Recently, a client came to Fluid Energy to develop a product that required multi-stage research and development including drying, particle coating, and jet milling down to 5 micron," said Vanderford. "In a matter of days, Fluid Energy was able to build a complete process for the client through the new lab to pilot program."

Gutkind estimates that if the client had attempted to do the research and development in-house, the capital expenditures alone would have totaled over half a million dollars.

"The costs associated with R&D and processing in-house was preventing this client from developing the product at all," said Gutkind. "Through our new lab to pilot services, we were able to bring the customer's ideas to reality at a fraction the cost of doing it in-house, and we were able to deliver it in a much shorter time frame than the customer anticipated."

Gutkind noted that recently, Fluid Energy ran that client's first 100,000 pounds of product at their production facility in Hatfield.

Fluid Energy's experienced R&D staff is now available discuss lab to pilot processing needs with potential clients. For additional information on Fluid Energy's new lab to pilot program, please call 215-721-8990 or visit http://www.fluidenergype.com.

Fluid Energy Processing and Equipment Company is the world leader in powder processing solutions, offering research and development, toll processing services and equipment manufacturing for powder processing needs of the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and processing industries.

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