Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1067339
Tablets & Capsules January 2019 32C manufacturers of premium branded supplements and food products," said Kent Mansfield, president of TruTag. "When brand-name nutraceutical products gain market share and expand quickly into new channels, they are at risk of product compro- mise because of higher price points and better margins. These qualities attract counterfeiters and other opportunists within the distribution and retail markets." A perfect match Despite both companies having m a j o r o p e r a t i o n s i n H a w a i i (TruTag's cGMP microtag produc- tion facility is in Kapolei), Daily Wellness and TruTag hadn't begun a working relationship with each other until 2017. Kwock was concerned that it might be difficult to integrate an on-dose security feature to his com- pany's manufacturing processes and formulas, but TruTag quickly put him at ease. "At first, most of our clients don't realize is how small a quantity of our product is used to integrate this secu- rity feature into a solid dosage form," said Mansfield. "Each microparticle measures 25 to 75 micrograms, and the loading percentage onto a solid oral product can be less than a quar- ter of a percent and even lower depending on the application." TruTag has developed two pri- mary methods for integrating these machine-readable microparticles into solid dosage forms. The first method incorporates the microparticles during the tablet film-coating pro- cess, either mixing them into the product's existing base coat or into a clear overcoat applied after the base coat. The second method incorpo- rates the microparticles into the for- mulation during the blending stage or into the ink printed on the cap- sule. Each of these methods is fairly easy for manufacturers to deploy. Because Daily Wellness products come in both tablets and capsules, Kwock agreed to run a few pilot batches to determine how the micro- particles would blend with the for- to ensure that all the units of each batch contained the microparticles. The resulting blend had the consis- tency required to ensure that every final product unit could be identified using the readers. "Once we saw how easy it was to add the microparticles, we were convinced that TruTag offered the best authentication solution for our products," said Kwock. "The fact that TruTag already had the certifi- mulations and if the company would need to make any changes to the existing manufacturing process. "We were happy to discover that integrat- ing the TruTag silica microparticles had very little impact on our stan- dard operating procedures and manu- facturing processes," said Kwock. During these pilot runs, TruTag used different loading densities and tested the products at different points in the manufacturing process