AURORA, ILLINOIS, U.S. — SternMaid America, sister company of Wittenburg, Germany-based SternMaid, has opened its first production facility in Aurora, Illinois, U.S. The facility offers comprehensive, customized contract manufacturing services for compounding powdered substances, in particular food supplements.

With completion of the first phase of construction, a semi-automated blending line and two separate packaging lines for industrial packs and retail packaging are available in an area of 32,000 square feet. The plant has a blending capacity of about 4,000 tonnes per year.

SternMaid America offers the whole service chain of contract manufacturing – from expertise in compounding, quality control of the raw materials and co-packing to warehousing and logistics.

“Growing demand from manufacturers of dietary food supplements and special products for athletes led us to set up a microblending facility of our own in Aurora and invest in the U.S.”, said Jan Thoele, head of Sales North America at SternMaid America. “Production here gives us important logistic advantages. Short delivery routes compared to shipments from Germany and procurement of raw materials in the region mean considerable value-added for our customers.”

The state-of-the-art, semi-automated blending line can be used for order sizes from 500 lbs. to over 22,000 lbs. Further features in addition to its high blending precision of up to 1:100,000 include fast setup times and flexible filling into small or large containers – for example bags, fiberboard boxes, drums or FIBCs (super sacks).

At this plant, liquid components are sprayed onto the powder homogeneously through special nozzles. These atomizing spray nozzles permit extremely fine dispersion of microcomponents like flavorings, oils or emulsifiers. In addition, high percentages of fats and highly viscous liquids can be added too.