Lyophilization is the technical name for freeze drying: the product is frozen, placed under vacuum, and the ice leaves by sublimation — solid straight to vapour — preserving structure, colour and activity that heat drying destroys. Contract lyophilization means we run that process for you.
Every other drying method moves water as a liquid. Lyophilization never lets it become one, and that single difference is the whole value proposition.
Below the triple point, water cannot exist as a liquid. Hold a frozen product under sufficient vacuum and add gentle heat, and the ice moves straight from solid to vapour. The product never passes through a liquid phase, so there is no surface tension pulling the structure inward as it dries — which is exactly what causes the shrinkage, case-hardening and collapse you see in heat-dried material.
The consequences are practical, not poetic. The dried piece keeps its original shape and volume, which is why freeze-dried fruit looks like fruit. The porous structure left behind by the departed ice rehydrates in seconds rather than minutes. And because the product never gets hot, heat-labile actives, volatile aromatics and live cultures survive at rates no other drying method reaches.
That is also why the cycle cannot be rushed. Push heat in faster than vapour can leave and the product warms above its collapse temperature — the structure you paid for is gone, and it does not come back.
Being clear about the edge of your capability is more useful than a longer list.
Food and ingredients, nutraceuticals, botanicals and extracts, pet nutrition, and development runs that prove a cycle before scaling it. These are the products our systems are engineered around.
Stated plainly: our systems are commercial production equipment, not validated pharmaceutical equipment. Sterile fill-finish and validated pharma lyophilization belong with a validated CDMO, and we will say so rather than take work we should not. If your product needs a validated process, the right answer is a different supplier, and you should be suspicious of anyone who tells you otherwise.
We publish the instrument rather than a rate card, because a rate card that fits every product fits none of them.
The pounds of water that must leave your batch decide the work; handling and packaging ride on top. Two batches of identical weight can be very different jobs — a 1,000 lb batch at 90% starting moisture gives up 898.0 lb of water, the same batch at 60% gives up 591.8 lb. The second is a materially smaller job on an identical pallet.
The sizing calculator computes your batch’s water load and the removal rate it implies; the cost-per-pound panel on the same page turns any quoted run cost into dollars per pound of water removed. Use it on our quotes and on everyone else’s.
Running the freeze-drying process on your product using our commercial systems. You supply the material, we run the cycle, and you keep ownership throughout. It is the same process as contract freeze drying — lyophilization is simply the technical term.
Food and ingredients, nutraceuticals, botanicals and extracts, pet nutrition, and development runs. Our systems are commercial food-grade production equipment, not validated pharmaceutical equipment — sterile fill-finish and validated pharma work belong with a validated CDMO.
From your product’s water load, plus handling and packaging if required. We publish the arithmetic rather than a rate card so you can compare quotes on a like-for-like basis: dollars per pound of water removed.
Characterize the product on the quote form: what it is, batch weight, starting and target moisture, and how it loads. A development run on your actual product is the normal first step before committing to volume.