March, 2025
Instant powders products continue to gain popularity due to their convenience, variety, and high-quality results after reconstitution. The global superfood powders market was valued at $6.57 billion in 2022 and is projected to grow at a 7.3% CAGR through 2030, while the global milk powder market is expected to reach $65.3 billion by 2030, growing at a 7.33% CAGR. This surge reflects the increasing demand for instant foods like milk, coffee, cocoa drinks, soups, desserts, and health supplements, which align with the fast-paced lifestyles of modern consumers.
Lecithin for instant products is a key technological ingredient used in the production of instant products, ensuring optimal reconstitution in liquids such as water or milk. When powders like cocoa or nutritional beverages are poured into a liquid, they must be efficiently wetted and submerged—a property known as wettability. Lecithin plays a crucial role in improving this process by enhancing the powder’s ability to sink (sinkability) and ensuring uniform dispersion of particles, which contributes to better solubility and dispersibility.
Beyond the initial mixing, lecithin also stabilizes the solution, maintaining a homogeneous texture even when stirred with a spoon. To achieve the best instant properties, lecithin should be carefully selected, as its effectiveness depends on multiple factors, including the production process of the instant powders and their specific application. The right combination of lecithin ensures that wet particles fully submerge and integrate smoothly, delivering the desired texture and consistency in instant food and beverage products.
The production of instant powders involves three key processes: simple mixing, spraying, and spray-drying, each offering different benefits depending on the final application. In the simple mix process, all powdered ingredients are blended using equipment like ribbon blenders or cone blenders. Lecithin is added either in powder form or as a liquid diluted in oil, coating the particles with a thin layer of phospholipids to enhance their instant properties.
The spraying process takes lecithin application a step further. After pre-blending the main components, lecithin is pumped through specialized nozzles—such as multiheaded, high-pressure, or three-head atomizing nozzles—ensuring an even distribution over the powder. This method improves wettability and sinkability by creating a more uniform lecithin coating.
The most advanced method, spray-drying, involves dissolving the ingredients into a solution, atomizing them through nozzles, and subjecting the particles to a fluid bed step for agglomeration. Here, in the first step of the fluid bed, is where our lecithins for instant products are added. This high-energy process leads to particle collision, adhesion, fusion, and evaporation, resulting in coarser granules with irregular shapes, higher density, and improved dispersibility.
The effectiveness of lecithination depends on the type of product being instantized, as different formulations require specific lecithin polarities. For products with high-fat content, such as whole milk powders, buttermilk powders, and cocoa powders, Lasenor INS SP range. This ensures better interaction with the fat components, enhancing wettability, sinkability, and dispersion in liquids.
Conversely, products with lower fat content, such as skimmed milk powders, whey protein concentrates, caseinates, and cocoa-containing drink powders, benefit from Lasenor INS range. This adjustment allows for improved solubility while maintaining the product’s desired texture. Regardless of the lecithin’s source or polarity, the viscosity of the final product can be fine-tuned to meet the processing equipment’s requirements, ensuring optimal performance across various applications.
The instantization process plays a crucial role in enhancing the solubility, dispersibility, and stability of powdered products, with lecithin being a key component in achieving these properties. Whether through simple mixing, spraying, or spray-drying, the selection of the right lecithin type—based on polarity and product formulation—ensures optimal performance across various applications, from high-fat cocoa powders to low-fat protein concentrates.
Lasenor offers the most advanced lecithin solutions, designed to meet the specific needs of each instantized product. With a deep understanding of formulation requirements and processing techniques, Lasenor provides high-quality lecithin that guarantee superior functionality, ensuring perfect reconstitution, improved stability, and enhanced consumer experience in a wide range of instant food and beverage products.
Article Sourced from Lasenor
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