What is SubMicron?

A micronutrient is a substance that plays a vital role in physiology, such as a vitamin, a mineral or a phytochemical, that is, a substance made by plants, such as lycopene (in tomatoes). A lot of vitamins and phytochemicals are not soluble in water. These include Zeaxanthin, Lutein, vitamin A and Omega 3, to name a few. SubMicron is a technology to make fat-soluble substances water-miscible.

This innovative solution makes it a simple matter to mix fat-soluble ingredients into drinks or food without impacting aspects such as colour or transparency. More importantly: SubMicron offers enormous health benefits, such as the ability to add vitamins to drinks and other food products that can normally only be ingested in capsule form. SubMicron products make it easy, as the vitamins are already incorporated in your food or drink. That means there’s no need to take supplements to be sure you are getting enough of these vitamins. Furthermore, SubMicron technology improves the active ingredients’ bioavailability.

What is bioavailability?
Bioavailability means the amount of a nutrient or substance that your body will absorb, so essentially, the proportion that is going to have an active effect. Liquid, drinkable vitamins have a very high bioavailability because you do not need to digest it first as you would with a tablet or gummy.

Product applications

Where can SubMicron be found?

SubMicron is ideal as an ingredient for use in all kinds of drinks, but also in bakery products, for example. A few ideas of possible SubMicron applications:

The technology

How does SubMicron work?

Emulsifiers make it possible for water to absorb fat-soluble vitamins. An emulsion consists of two liquids that normally do not mix, such as oil and water.

We use SubMicron technology and excipients to break up the drops of oil into much smaller droplets, making the nutrients easier to absorb. The resulting SubMicron product is a concentrated emulsion of oil in water. This technique allows fat-soluble ingredients to be easily mixed into drinks, for example, without affecting the appearance, smell or taste. In this way, a product can be further enriched with essential nutrients while maintaining its original sensory properties.

In addition to an oil-in-water emulsion, SubMicron is also available as a powder concentrate, perfect for bakery applications, for example. We remove surplus water and add a coating to the SubMicron oil droplets to produce this powder concentrate, which can then be diluted with water to create a clear end product.