Smooth Now Offering a Complete Line of Revolutionary Emulsification Equipment and Exhibiting at HBA Global

NEW YORK, March 18, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

HBA Global announces that first-time exhibitor, Smooth, a leader in revolutionary technology for producing emulsions and other formulated products, will be exhibiting at the upcoming trade show and conference in New York. Smooth's product line, which includes new larger-scale "cradle" and "cabinet" devices (http://www.smoothtoday.com/Products), enable applications ranging from lab-scale experiments to pilot plants to full commercial production of hundreds of liters per minute of superior emulsified products. The company also offers excellent engineering and on-site support ( http://www.smoothtoday.com/resources), including a 24 hour service to specify pumps and other equipment, and on-site analysts who work with customers to set-up quickly and successfully operate emulsification systems.

"At HBA Global we look forward to connecting with top beauty and personal care formulators and product development teams seeking the latest innovations in emulsification technology," said Mark Grace, of Smooth. Information about this new emulsion technology and associated services as well as Smooth hardware will be on display at Booth 1257 during the HBA Global Expo & Conference, June 28-30, 2011 at the Javits Center in New York, the leading product development source for the entire beauty and personal care industry.

Emulsions and formulated products can be found nearly everywhere from personal care and cosmetics to food and household chemicals to paints and adhesives. However, despite their ubiquity, many desired formulations have not made it to the market because of the limitations of traditional mixing equipment. Traditionally, emulsions are made with high speed mixers, which have poor control and often over-shear fragile ingredients. This leads to over-designing compositions and processing conditions to ensure product requirements are met, as well as the overuse of chemical surfactants. Smooth technology solves many of these shortcomings by operating in a continuous, instead of batch, fashion and adding droplets into the continuous phase through an engineered dispersion plate. The result is very uniform and stable emulsions, often without the need for surfactants.

Smooth lab-scale and pilot devices, which produce up to 5 liters per minute, have been available for over a year and are currently being used by Fortune 500 companies. The new "cradle" product places five Smooth pilot devices in parallel and can produce up to 25 liters per minute, while a "cabinet" is essentially multiple parallel cradles and can produce hundreds of liters per minute of uniform emulsified products. Product engineers are encouraged to experiment with lab and pilot devices to determine the optimal configuration and process parameters to produce the desired formulation. The critical variables determined in these tests are then built-into cradle and cabinet production scale units to make consistent, high quality products far more efficiently than possible with batch mixers, and other traditional equipment.

Smooth, also known as microchannel emulsification, offers unprecedented flexibility in creating entirely new emulsified products, but, like all new tools, it can take time to master. To address the challenge of switching to a new platform, Smooth offers a superior suite of support services. These include a 24-hour service that provides specifications for pumps and heat exchangers, both of which are critical for the proper operation of Smooth units. The specification services uses feed characteristics provided by the customer and within 24 hours returns customized specifications that can then be used with pump and heat exchanger vendors to supply the right equipment. In addition, experienced Smooth onsite analysts are available to work with customers at their location. Analysts can assist, or lead, virtually every aspect from setting up a new Smooth emulsification system to making modifications to optimize performance. For information go to: http://www.smoothtoday.com.

About Smooth

Smooth is a brand of the Velocys, Inc. which was acquired by Oxford Catalysts Group PLC in 2008. Oxford Catalysts Group is listed on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange (LSE: OCG) and has some 80 employees at facilities near Oxford, UK and Columbus, Ohio, USA. Velocys, which designs and develops microchannel process technology for a range of applications, was spun out of Battelle Memorial Institute, the world's largest not-for-profit science and technology organization, in 2001. It owns, or has licenses to, the largest microchannel patent portfolio in the world. http://www.velocys.com & http://www.oxfordcatalysts.com

About HBA Global Expo & Conference

HBA Global Expo & Conference (http://www.hbaexpo.com) produced by UBM Live, is the most important product development source -- from concept to market -- for the cosmetics, personal care, skin care, fragrance and wellness industries and features more than 600 educational and exhibitor partners. Exhibitors include international suppliers of raw materials and ingredients, packaging materials and components, dispensing systems, private label and contract manufacturers and testing equipment. The three-day conference program is renowned for providing cutting-edge information on the latest industry trends, new product developments, marketing and branding know-how, as well as the latest in organics, package design, global distribution, and technical advancements. Connect with the HBA Global communities on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/HBA-Global-Expo-and-Conference/309356259815), Linkedin (http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=1856844&trk=anet_ug_grppro) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/hba_events).