Lesaffre's LIS Adds Strasbourg Drying Capacity and New Powder Technology
- LIS by Lesaffre has added a box dryer with around 4000 tonnes a year of capacity at its newly integrated Strasbourg site.
- The company has invested in fluidised bed (LAF) technology for granulation, coating, co-drying and over-drying of powders.
- LIS has more than 60 years of experience in spray drying and runs facilities at Cérences in France and Legnica in Poland.
A supplier's new equipment is only useful to a buyer whose contract is written to use it.
LIS by Lesaffre has added around 4000 tonnes a year of drying capacity at a Strasbourg site, alongside a new fluidised bed technology that can change how a powder ingredient actually performs. For any business that outsources drying, blending or granulation of food, nutraceutical or cosmetic powders, that is a new option worth checking against the current contract.
According to Agro Media, LIS by Lesaffre, the drying services arm of Lesaffre, is integrating the Lesaffre Culinary Strasbourg site into its network. The site brings an existing box dryer with capacity of around 4000 tonnes a year, adding to facilities LIS already runs at Cérences in France and Legnica in Poland. LIS has more than 60 years of experience in spray drying.
Alongside the integration, LIS has invested in a new technology at Strasbourg: the fluidised bed dryer, referred to in the French market as lit d'air fluidisé or LAF. This multifunction equipment allows granulation to improve the dispersibility, flowability and compressibility of powders, coating to protect active ingredients, co-drying for precise dosing of a compound onto a carrier, and over-drying to adjust moisture content.
This matters to anyone who currently pays a contractor to turn a liquid ingredient into powder, whether that is a food ingredient maker, a nutraceutical or personal care producer formulating with active powders, or an animal nutrition business handling premixes. The new site widens what one supplier network can offer and adds technical steps, coating and granulation in particular, that previously meant finding a second supplier or running the process in house.
Businesses with existing toll processing or contract manufacturing agreements for spray dried or powder ingredients should check whether the current scope already allows them to request these newer services, or whether the contract needs renegotiating to add them. It is also worth checking whether the added Strasbourg capacity changes lead times on existing orders.
Businesses that keep their processing contracts flexible enough to add new steps as they become available get the benefit of better powder functionality without requalifying a new supplier from scratch. Those locked into a fixed scope will have to renegotiate, or go elsewhere, before they can use any of it.