MEGGLE Direct Cost revels hidden savings from Direct Compression tableting

Wasserburg, Germany: – Pharmaceutical lactose specialist MEGGLE Excipients &Technology (MEGGLE) has launched DirectCost as a web-based calculation tool designed to help customers optimize their tableting process.

“There are two main methods of producing a tablet: either using a wet granulation [WG] process or via a direct compression [DC] process,” explains MEGGLE Project Manager Marketing, Christoph Adler.

Wet granulation vs. direct compression

“Wet granulation is probably the most popular method for tablet production but it has many more production steps compared to direct compression. If your formulation is suitable for direct compression a reduction of processing time, labor, energy and validations costs can be achieved.” said Mr. Adler.

“The more economic way is to produce via direct compression, where the marginal costs of premium ingredients like agglomerated, spray-dried or co-processed lactose excipients can be far outweighed by reducing production steps and ultimate time savings,” he pointed out.

Cost benefit analysis

“DirectCost will allow our customer base of purchasing managers and R&D scientists to directly compare DC and WG processes for the same formulation to see whether switching from cheaper wet granulation excipients to the more expensive direct compressible ingredients could in fact save significant amounts of money over the long term,” said Mr. Adler.

DirectCost provides an easy way to compare wet granulation with direct compression, allowing rapid assessment of the cost and time saving potential of a selected formulation.

Free access

MEGGLE has designed DirectCost as a simple to use tool to calculate the cost/savings ratio and ultimate benefit, offering complete flexibility on batch size and process steps. Six different example formulations will showcase the functionality of the tool.

It provides immediate graphical visualizations and reports and can be run offline on a wide variety of PC and mobile platforms, with results saved locally or to the cloud.

MEGGLE is offering full access to DirectCost free of charge to all its registered customers and is planning a series of online tutorials and webinars to explain how to get the best results from the tool.

About MEGGLE Wasserburg

Bavarian-based MEGGLE Wasserburg is one of the world’s experts in lactose based excipients and powder technology.

From its roots as a dairy operation in the late 1880s, MEGGLE has become one of the world’s leading manufacturers of pharmaceutical lactose, supplying the pharma market segment with a broad-based and unique lactose product portfolio.

MEGGLE Excipients & Technology has harnessed outstanding product quality and intelligent innovation to become a global leader in the manufacture of lactose-based excipients, focusing on products for direct tableting and dry powder inhalation.

A multidisciplinary team of committed and highly qualified people allows MEGGLE clients to benefit from pioneering experience and innovative drive in industrial milk and whey processing. The company constantly strives to develop high-tech, functional products for solid dosage form applications, where they can deliver maximum performance.

The company has introduced several pioneering products, notably Tablettose®, the world’s first agglomerated lactose for direct tableting, Cellactose® 80, a pioneering co-processed excipient based on cellulose-lactose for outstanding compression and flow properties and RetaLac®, the first direct compressible co-processed excipient using a hypromellose-lactose base for modified release formulations.