RotaChrom opens equipment reference facility in the USA

New Facility Features Operational Botanical Extract Purification Equipment on Display for Potential Customers and Operators.

RotaChrom announced the opening of a showroom and equipment reference facility in Denver, Colorado. The new facility features a fully functioning setup of the Company’s industrial-scale Centrifugal Partition Chromatography solution, the pCPC. The state-of-the-art solution consists of RotaChrom’s auxiliary SKID system, which automates the purification process from solvent preparation to recycling, and a preconcentration line for the compound-of-interest stream, including a customized solvent recovery system designed by Heidolph Instruments.

The Company has partnered with longtime client Hau Processing to set up the equipment reference facility, which is on the premises of Hau Processing. The 15,000-square-foot facility is located in a newly built, world-class business park in northeast Denver. The systems on display are fully operational, which allows potential customers to witness the equipment in action, ask questions about the machinery as it relates to their specific requirements, and gain an understanding of various integrations and best practices for building and operating a complete system. The scalable configuration includes the pilot-scale rCPC and the production-scale pCPC, which in combination not only provide a highly versatile system, but also deliver orthogonality to the customer, enabling quick reaction time in a constantly evolving market. The components of the system installed by RotaChrom utilize a proven superior methodology of chromatography when compared to other alternative technologies in the market. The flexible CPC system is capable of isolating materials for alternative revenue streams. RotaChrom configured the system for the customer, while keeping its versatility, and the result gives the customer a more purified botanical extract at a lower cost due to more efficient processing, solvent recycling, and automation. The system is environmentally friendly as it does not use silica gel and operates with a high influx of regenerated solvent.

“With such a technical and revolutionary system as ours, we felt it imperative to open a facility that was able to showcase the technology in action while providing potential customers with an immersive educational experience,” said RotaChrom North America President Gyula Kangiszer. “Most processors working in the botanical extract space understand the value proposition of chromatography for purification; however, until now, mostly all industrial-size applications required an exorbitant amount of space with drawbacks such as lack of scalability, high solvent consumption, limited automation, and constrained loadability. Our system is the first of its kind and offers those operating in the botanical extract space, specifically as it relates to hemp purification, a truly revolutionary solution. It is important to highlight that this technology, unlike other approaches on the market, is not only able to adapt the process flow from isolation to remediation within a couple hours, but is also able to deliver the product without chemically altering its composition. And what better way to showcase this innovation than by offering customers the opportunity to experience the system first-hand.”

RotaChrom North America Vice President of Product Development Zoltan Peresztegi added: “As operators and scientists continue to look for solutions in hemp purification and processing, we felt that opening a reference facility in the rapidly expanding market of Colorado was the obvious choice. Colorado is one of the cornerstone states of the burgeoning hemp industry. Denver is easily accessible from all areas of the U.S. and from abroad as well. We plan to host tours, both in-person and virtually, and to use the showroom and equipment reference facility as a platform for showcasing our system while demonstrating its true potential.”

Peresztegi stressed the importance of integrated solutions: “Customers face many challenges when trying to optimize ‘mix-and-match’ equipment. We are proud to provide a solution by combining our company’s technologies with other leading providers to create this much-needed network.”

As demand for purified cannabinoids grows, processors need to scale production in the most cost-effective ways without sacrificing purity or quality. Traditional methods for purifying compounds from natural products are too expensive and labor intensive to scale up for commercial manufacturers who need to produce large amounts of end product. The Company’s CPC systems are designed with this problem in mind. CPC has generally been known to be faster, with less consumption of disposable materials, and a reduced need for human oversight. The pCPC system is the industry’s first commercially scalable version of a CPC and is adaptable for use in purification of any size molecule, from molecule APIs to macromolecules.