Pharmaceutical Gummy Ingredients 101: Getting Started
As a manufacturer serving the pharmaceutical industry, you may be looking to expand into offering a range of gummy vitamins and supplements for your employer or clients. This may feel easier in theory than in practice, though. How do you get started with sourcing the right ingredients or developing a stable formula?
At Gummy Tech, we supply many of the world’s leading pharmaceutical brands and contract manufacturers with scalable solutions for developing highly refined gummy vitamins and supplements. To understand the needs of our customers, we have become intimately familiar with the gummy manufacturing process and the wide range of ingredients that can be used.
To help you get started, we are going to review some of the essential ingredients needed to create gummy vitamins and supplements at your facility. First, though, you need the right equipment.
Professional-Grade Gummy Equipment
Gummy vitamin manufacturing starts with highly specialized equipment that is designed to facilitate each step of the standard production process. This includes a preheating kettle, heated storage tank, chilling tunnel, a hopper and depositor, molds, and a collection of other components. You can also purchase an optional coating machine if you wish to add an oil, sugar, or powder coating to the gummy before it arrives at the quality control phase.
For quality control, a water activity meter will prove an indispensable solution for safeguarding against the potential microbial growth or shortened product shelf life. This handheld device can measure the aW levels of gummies within a matter of minutes to identify any error in the product before it is packaged.
To determine what type of machinery you should purchase, we suggest first estimating the average batch size that you will need to manufacture on a regular basis for each gummy product you plan to produce. Will the demand increase or decrease within the next few years?
Usually, we will recommend that you purchase equipment designed to handle one batch size up from your current production estimates. This will allow you to continue scaling as interest in your services expands.
Lastly, you will need machinery that can professionally package your gummies. This could include a bottle unscrambler, capping machine, induction sealer, cartoner, labeler, and a variety of other solutions depending on your preferences or branding requirements.
Ingredients for the Gummies Themselves
1: A Base Ingredient
The majority of gummies on the market are made with gelatin. This popular base ingredient is sourced from animal bones, which may cause some concerns for businesses that want to appeal to a vegan consumer base. Other plant-based options include pectin, vegan jel, and agar agar as alternatives.
It is important to note that these bases all possess different melting points. Keeping this in mind, you should familiarize yourself with these temperatures and adjust your equipment accordingly.
2: Flavoring and Coloring Ingredients
The sweet flavor and eye-catching colors are some of the reasons why gummy vitamins have become the preferred choice for many consumers. Most gummies are manufactured with pure sugar as their sweetener, but you could also use a glucose or fructose syrup and low-calorie options like stevia or monk fruit in their place. As with a base ingredient, nonstandard sweeteners may also have different melting points compared to sugar.
If you want to save time on sourcing ingredients, you could also use a pre-sweetened flavoring agent. These are often available in either sweetened or unsweetened form.
3: Active Ingredients
If you are manufacturing a vitamin C gummy, the vitamin C in the formula is the active ingredient because it provides an additional benefit beyond taste. This can range from different types of vitamins to specific minerals or specialty ingredients like CBD oil.
4: Citric Acid
How Citric Acid is used in your gummy production, will depend largely on the gummy base that has been selected. Citric acid causes the gummy slurry to gel and stabilizes the formula’s pH. It can also serve as a flavor enhancer to add an additional hint of flavor.
Start Producing Gummies at Scale Today
As a division of CapPlus, a global leader in pharmaceutical production and packaging equipment, our team at Gummy Tech equips gummy vitamin manufacturers with high-performing solutions for creating many of the best-selling gummy products found on pharmacy shelves worldwide.
If you are looking to purchase gummy equipment and start expanding your own product line, we can help connect you with the right machinery for your specifications as well as recommend where to source base ingredients from trusted suppliers. Contact us today to get started.