Open House at Romaco Innojet

In small groups, the participants of the Open House day went through the various stations in the assembly hall of Romaco Innojet in Steinen, Germany.

Demonstration of the centrally mounted spray nozzle ROTOJET® of a 1,500-liter system from the VENTILUS® series.

Innojet-Founder Dr. h. c. Herbert Hüttlin (left in the picture) explains to the mayor of the municipality of Steinen, Gunther Braun, the fundamentals of fluidized bed technology.

Innojet Managing Director Thomas Merle (right in the picture) honors the first customer of Romaco Innojet – the company Arafarma Group, S.A., a Spanish pharmaceutical and dietary supplement manufacturer.

Approximately 40 participants from Europe and Asia attended the Open House at Romaco Innojet, a leading provider of process technology from Steinen (Germany). In addition to live demonstrations in the laboratory and practical presentations in the assembly hall, a lecture by the company's founder, Dr. h. c. Herbert Hüttlin, was also on the program. His inventions still form the basis of Romaco Innojet's fluidized bed technologies today.

For this year's Open House at Romaco Innojet, around 40 visitors gathered at the manufacturer's site of process technology in Steinen, southern Germany. The participants came from nine different mostly European countries, but there were also guests from Turkey, Israel, and Bangladesh. The focus was on processes such as granulation, drying, and coating of fine solid particles for the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, food, and chemical industries. The morning session was divided into the laboratory, training center, and assembly hall, which the participants rotated through in small groups.

Behind the scenes

In the newly designed assembly hall, Romaco Innojet showcased a selection of its product portfolio, including two fluidized bed processors from the Innojet VENTILUS® product family, designed for production scale, and a granulation line of the Innojet IGL type, consisting of a high-shear mixer and a fluidized bed dryer. After expansion, the hall offers enough space for the simultaneous assembly of several large systems with capacities of up to 1,500 liters. The peripheral modules for ventilation and air conditioning were housed in an adjacent building.

Focus on sustainability

In the training center, visitors gained insights into the latest developments from Romaco Innojet. As part of its sustainability initiative, the company has implemented various measures to save energy and raw materials. The manufacturer’s innovative heat recovery systems, available optionally with integrated heat pump or cross-flow heat exchanger, achieve energy savings of up to 70 percent, depending on the product and process. With FLEXIJET, Innojet also presented its latest spray technology. The robust bottom-spray nozzle was specifically developed for granulation processes and is very easy to operate and maintain.

Laboratory experiments at InnoTech

Live demonstrations in the InnoTech laboratory simulated various scenarios in product development and explained the advantages of VENTILUS® technology in scale-up. The cylindrical product container with the centrally located nozzle provides ideal conditions for conducting scale-up trials. Due to their precisely controllable airflow conditions, Romaco Innojet’s fluidized bed processors are also suitable for hot melt applications, as visitors could see on site. The hot melt coating process shortens process times by up to 85 percent, significantly improving the ecological footprint of the manufactured products.

Afternoon session with founder Dr. h. c. Herbert Hüttlin

Early in the afternoon, the mayor of Steinen, Gunther Braun, joined the guests and received an introduction to the origins of the air glide layer process from the company's founder, Dr. h. c. Herbert Hüttlin. As a consistent development of traditional fluidized bed technology, it forms the basis of Romaco Innojet’s technologies.
Following this, the 81-year-old Herbert Hüttlin opened the afternoon session with a lecture about his life's work. He has received numerous awards and honors for his groundbreaking inventions, such as the Dr.-Rudolf-Eberle Prize in 1993 and the Innovation Award of the state of Baden-Württemberg. More than 170 patents have been key to Innojet’s success to date and establish the company's reputation as an innovation leader for highly efficient process solutions.

Subsequent lectures covered Romaco Kilian’s latest tablet technology and the highly automated tablet coaters from Romaco Tecpharm. To conclude the official part of the event, the first purchaser of a Romaco Innojet fluidized bed processor was honored. The VENTILUS® V-200 has been in operation since delivery in 2003 at Arafarma Group, S.A., a Spanish pharmaceutical and supplement manufacturer. Over 200 Romaco Innojet systems are now in use worldwide.

Innojet Managing Director Thomas Merle reports positive results

“We succeeded in giving our international guests a comprehensive insight into our portfolio and our work in the laboratory. This is especially important because we work very closely with our customers from the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, food, and chemical industries, particularly in formulation and product development,” summarizes Thomas Merle, Managing Director of Romaco Innojet.

“Therefore, I was very keen to present our partners with the ongoing development of our technologies and the modernization of our business unit. Recently, we invested in expanding our assembly hall, creating new production capacities. This allows us to optimize our throughput times and significantly increase our efficiency. This is already reflected in our sales figures, which nearly doubled in the past fiscal year.”