Food and nutrition manufacturers face growing consumer demand for clean-label products, formulations that avoid additives perceived as artificial or synthetic. Spray drying has emerged as a core enabling technology to convert liquid or semi-liquid ingredient streams into powders while preserving functionality, stability, and purity. This blog examines how spray drying supports clean-label ingredients, addresses technical challenges, showcases case studies, and outlines strategies that ingredient suppliers can adopt to meet industrial demand for high-quality, clean-label powders.
According to Kings Research, the global spray drying equipment market is projected to grow from USD 7.26 billion in 2025 to USD 10.61 billion by 2032, exhibiting a CAGR of 5.51% during the forecast period. The growth is driven by increasing adoption of spray drying equipment in major industries, including food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, and chemicals.
Why clean-label demands create new challenges for ingredient suppliers
Consumer surveys suggest a strong influence of clean-label claims on purchasing decisions. A 2024 study reports that 81 percent of shoppers say it is important to purchase food products labeled ‘clean label’. Ingredient suppliers aiming to serve this market must deliver powders that meet performance criteria (solubility, stability, flow, shelf life) while avoiding synthetic stabilizers, chemical carriers, anti-caking agents, or excessive excipients.
Spray drying offers a route to clean-label powders by enabling encapsulation, moisture reduction, flow improvement, and protection of functional molecules without requiring excessive additive load. Traditional drying methods (e.g., freeze-drying, drum drying) either impose a high cost or degrade functional compounds. Spray drying can produce powders that incorporate actives, flavors, proteins, or botanical extracts, while limiting thermal damage and minimizing extraneous ingredients.
How spray drying works and adapts to clean-label requirements
Spray drying transforms a liquid feed (solution, emulsion, or suspension) into a dry powder by atomizing droplets in a heated gas stream. Rapid evaporation of solvent leaves dried particles within milliseconds. Particle size, morphology, porosity, density, and surface properties depend on feed properties (concentration, viscosity, and solids content), atomization type (nozzle, rotary, ultrasonic), drying temperature, and residence time. Accurate control of these parameters is crucial to preserve functional and sensory qualities.
Clean-label constraints impose additional design boundaries. Feed formulations must exclude synthetic carriers or stabilizers that conflict with label claims. Alternative carriers may include maltodextrin, native starches, proteins, fibers, or other “label-friendly” ingredients. Cleaner formulations often reduce the concentration of solids or use dehumidified air or low-temperature drying to avoid thermal stress. A study on plant-based beverages achieved spray-dried powders without added carriers by optimizing the process (dehumidified air spray drying), though yield was limited (16 %–37 %). Researchers improved the yield for a concentrated beverage to 59.2 %. The tradeoff between purity, yield, and process cost demands careful optimization.
Advanced modeling supports understanding droplet evaporation, shell formation, and morphology evolution. A recent simulation of droplet drying in multicomponent slurries helps predict whether particles form dense solid cores or hollow shells based on drying conditions (Source: arxiv.org). Such modeling helps suppliers optimize process windows for clean-label ingredients.
Key technical challenges in producing clean-label powders with spray drying
- Thermal Degradation of Sensitive Compounds: Heat-sensitive molecules like vitamins, polyphenols, enzymes, and probiotics or bioactives degrade under high drying temperatures or long residence time. To mitigate this, suppliers must optimize inlet/outlet temperatures, use efficient atomization and short residence time, or incorporate mild encapsulation using label-friendly matrices. Review literature confirms that spray drying is a leading method for microencapsulation of vitamins, flavor molecules, and antioxidants due to its controllability and cost-effectiveness.
- Low Yield and Stickiness: High sugar, low molecular weight compounds, or viscous feeds often cause stickiness or wall deposition, reducing yield. Clean-label formulations exclude anti-stick or flow aides, so handling stickiness is challenging. Use of dehumidified air, optimization of feed solids concentration, modification of droplet size, or multi-stage drying configurations can reduce stickiness. One journal article notes that employing dehumidified air spray drying (DASD) allowed elimination of carriers, albeit with lower yield.
- Flowability, Caking, and Handling: Powders must exhibit good flow and resist caking under storage humidity. Traditional flow aids often conflict with clean-label goals (e.g., synthetic silica). Researchers demonstrated the creation of clean-label flow additives via spray drying that achieve <10 µm particles, which function akin to mineral flow aids, improving powder flow and reducing caking. Those additives help powder processing while preserving clean labeling.
- Morphology, Porosity, and Reconstitution Performance: Powder morphology and internal porosity affect dissolution, dispersibility, reconstitution speed, and core stability. Clean-label spray-dried powders must balance porosity (for fast dissolution) and density (for handling). Control of droplet drying kinetics, shell rigidity, and feed concentration is critical.
Case Studies of Industrial Implementations
Balchem’s Clean-Label Spray Drying Platform:
Balchem specializes in particle science and offers custom spray drying solutions targeted at clean-label and consumer-driven requirements. Their platform supports the production of powders using traditional ingredient statements or shorter, clean-label declarations. Balchem’s capabilities include atomization, agglomeration, blending, milling, and careful environmental control. Their marketing emphasizes their ability to produce lipid systems and emulsion powders while maintaining stability, shelf life, and compliance with clean label formulation constraints.
The company’s approach demonstrates how ingredient suppliers can offer flexible spray drying services capable of accommodating both standard and clean-label formulations. That dual capability helps manufacturers transition toward cleaner products without compromising performance.
GEA’s Aseptic Spray Drying for Pharmaceuticals and Nutraceuticals:
GEA, a leading provider of spray dryers, introduced its new ASEPTICSD spray dryer in 202,4, designed for pharmaceutical powders including proteins, peptides, monoclonal antibodies, and compounds requiring sterile handling. The device supports the conversion of sterile solutions into sterile particles in one step, while maintaining regulatory compliance. It includes steam sterilization, filter integrity testing, and advanced containment. (Source: www.gea.com) Though targeted at pharma, the technical rigor of GEA’s system sets a benchmark for ingredient spray drying where purity, control, and contamination avoidance are critical.
GEA’s history of supplying over 10,000 spray dryers and evolving from PHARMASD to ASEPTICSD underlines that high-control spray drying is a mature industrial domain. The adoption of such systems in high-value ingredients (nutraceuticals, probiotics) signals where clean-label ingredient processing must trend.
Clean-Label Flow Additive Development (Academic / Industry Hybrid):
Researchers demonstrated that spray-dried food powders can function as flow additives, replacing mineral excipients. In lab trials, they coated cohesive powders with <10 µm spray-dried food particles (e.g., maltodextrin, lactose, skim milk) and improved flow and anti-caking properties. These experiments validate that spray drying itself can generate functional, clean-label excipients. Transferring this concept to commercial scale demands process optimization, yield improvements, and cost alignment. The idea represents a pathway for ingredient suppliers to incorporate excipient function via spray drying while preserving clean-label status.
Strategies for Ingredient Suppliers to Capture Demand
- Process Development towards Low-Additive or Additive-Free Formulations: Suppliers must invest in formulations and drying methods enabling minimal or no synthetic additives. That includes exploring alternative carrier matrices (e.g., native starches, proteins, fibers), optimizing feed properties (viscosity, solids, surface tension), and employing controlled drying atmospheres (dehumidified air or staged drying) to reduce the need for flow aids or stabilizers. The study on powdering plant beverages without added carriers illustrates the possibility, yet highlights yield penalties. Mathematical modeling of droplet drying and shell formation can guide process windows that avoid hollow or collapsed particles, maximize yield, and maintain functional quality.
- Investment in Equipment with Advanced Control and Scale: High-precision spray dryers with tight control over temperature gradients, humidity, droplet residence, atomizer type, and process sensors support clean-label processing. Suppliers that acquire or collaborate with equipment vendors (e.g., GEA or equivalent) can scale sterile or highly controlled spray drying. Equipment innovations also include low-temperature or multi-stage drying to reduce thermal stress. Suppliers should design testing pilots and scale-up protocols to ensure that ingredient quality (bioactivity, purity, flow) remains consistent from lab to production.
- Quality Assurance, Traceability, and Documentation: Clean-label ingredient suppliers must furnish detailed documentation defining ingredient origin, absence of unwanted additives, absence of contaminants, batch testing of residual moisture, microbial safety, and functional assays. Certifications such as ISO 22000, HACCP, or GMP enhance credibility. Transparent traceability from raw materials to powder output supports labeling integrity and regulatory audits.
- Partnership with Downstream Brands and Formulators: Close collaboration with food, beverage, nutraceutical, or supplement brands enables co-validation of spray-dried powders in target formulations. Joint trials can prove reconstitution, mouthfeel, shelf stability, sensory impact, and supply robustness. Suppliers that help downstream developers overcome formulation challenges (e.g., solubility, flavor integration) increase the adoption of clean-label powders.
- Sustainability and Environmental Efficiency: Suppliers should monitor energy use, emissions, waste streams, and solvent recovery in spray drying operations. Reduced thermal load, optimized gas usage, and waste minimization align with sustainability goals. A lifecycle assessment study of spray drying of functional fruit ingredients indicates that fermentation plus spray drying strategies can yield favorable environmental performance. That supports marketing of clean-label powders on label purity, including environmental credentials.
Future Trends and Innovation Areas
- Ambient or Low-Temperature Spray Drying: Emerging low-temperature or ambient spray drying techniques offer the potential to handle ultra-heat-labile compounds while maintaining high yield. Those innovations will support the expansion of spray drying to antioxidants, probiotics, enzymes, or other sensitive actives.
- Integrated Microencapsulation and Controlled Release in Clean-Label Systems: Functional ingredients that require protection from oxidation, moisture, or deliquescence may be encapsulated using clean-label compatible materials (e.g., plant proteins, fibers, gums). Spray drying remains a key microencapsulation method; developments in wall materials and core–shell formulation will expand functional powder capability. The review of spray drying for nutraceutical ingredients underscores this role.
- Scale and Cost Reduction via Equipment and Process Innovation:Cost pressures will push the development of more efficient atomization, gas recovery systems, multi-stage drying, or modular spray drying units to reduce energy consumption and capital costs. Equipment vendors and component suppliers may license or develop innovations targeted for clean-label ingredient producers.
Conclusion
Spray drying offers a robust and scalable route to high-quality powders in clean-label formulations. Its capacity to convert liquids into controlled particles, encapsulate actives, stabilize sensitive molecules, and support shelf stability makes it central to modern ingredient production. Challenges include managing thermal degradation, yield, stickiness, flow properties, and ensuring purity in the absence of synthetic additives.
Case studies such as Balchem’s clean-label spray drying service, GEA’s aseptic systems, and academic demonstrations of clean-label flow additives illustrate pathways forward. Ingredient suppliers that invest in formulation innovation, process control, quality systems, sustainability metrics, and collaboration with downstream brands will be well-positioned to meet growing industrial demand for clean-label, functional powders.
