To say that NOW was expanding would be an understatement.
 
“This was the largest capital equipment investment in the company’s history,” said Ariel Marrero, director of Engineering for NOW. Considering NOW’s half-century of leadership in the natural and nutritional products market—and its position as the largest independent and family-owned manufacturer of natural products in the U.S. health food store segment—that was certainly saying something. Demand for its products was exploding, and the company was going all-in on growth.
 
In 2019, NOW began a comprehensive modernization of a 102,000-square-foot facility adjacent its longstanding primary plant in Bloomingdale, IL. In short order, the space was transformed into a state-of-the-art facility befitting its broad array of supplements, natural foods and sports nutrition products, to name just a few categories.
 
In parallel, the engineering team at NOW went about searching for the right equipment provider—one capable of meeting its needs for substantially improved output without sacrificing the product quality that has carried its brand for decades.
 
Prior to his arrival at NOW, Marrero’s career included roles with several prominent pharmaceutical manufacturers. Seeing that the growth trajectory at NOW called for both quantity and quality, he reached out to an equipment supplier he knew and trusted from his years in the life sciences field.
 
Germany-based L.B. Bohle supplies the pharmaceutical, nutritional and other life sciences sectors with an array of processing machinery. From dispensing systems, granulators, fluid bed dryers, sieves and mills to blenders, coaters and continuous manufacturing equipment, the company’s solutions carry formulations from R&D to large production scale.

PA. For starters, NOW was in the market for one of L.B. Bohle’s core solutions: precision blending equipment. During a series of discussions over a few months, the engineering and sales team at L.B. Bohle checked all the boxes.

 
“As the dialogue with L.B. Bohle progressed and deepened, I realized there was value in an even broader engagement,” said Marrero. “Given the unprecedented scope of the project, partnering with a single, trustworthy equipment supplier rather than dozens of different vendors had its obvious benefits.”
 
In other words, while NOW looked to scale up production, it made sense to scale down the number of equipment vendors involved. Marrero’s goal was clear: simplify NOW’s ambitious, complicated goal by embracing turnkey solutions wherever prudent.
 
Of course, that approach only works if an equipment vendor can offer seamless, precision manufacturing machinery that addresses a series of critical production line steps. As the relationship continued to expand, NOW expressed interest in a variety of process machines, an assortment including eight dispensing suites, two tablet coaters, two roller compactors, two large blenders, and various sizes of stationary lifters, as well as several tablet and powder intermediate bulk containers (IBCs).
 
L.B. Bohle was able to offer a “try before you buy” process aimed at proving the integrated systems’ viability for various NOW products. This approach was a key selling point, since the company’s newly designed facility was configured to run hundreds of different products, often at significantly larger batch sizes than before.


Understanding that transitioning to new processing equipment would mean transferring recipes from legacy machines, the engineering team at NOW was invited to L.B. Bohle’s Warminster, PA Service Center to conduct trial runs. The exercise answered any remaining questions about maintaining recipe consistency and uncompromising product quality despite much higher overall output.
 
Over a period of about three weeks, the demonstrations amounted to a sort of “pre-validation.” All systems were now a “go” for installation in the new plant.
 
“The opportunity for us to ‘show our work and process competence’ was a key element to this project—especially considering how far-reaching it was,” said Martin Hack, vice president and general manager for L.B. Bohle USA. “There’s a level of reassurance with knowing that a multi-million-dollar investment will meet expectations. It also helps minimize unforeseen challenges that can pop up with any major manufacturing process implementation.”
 
Ultimately, the results surpassed NOW’s goals for its state-of-the-art new facility. First and foremost, overall product yield grew in parallel with batch sizes, while the premium quality that NOW demands of its products was maintained.
 
Soon, other benefits became clear. The new production setup maximized manpower, as the same number of operators that were overseeing NOW’s legacy equipment production were now managing the expanded, higher-yield layout. Aided in part by larger batch sizes, machine uptime also increased—a key factor in meeting energy efficiency standards for the facility’s LEED Silver certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.
 
To date, NOW’s new facility has been operating for about a year and, according to Marrero, has been steadily ramping up to what he considers full capacity production. That the machinery still leaves ample room for future growth provides added peace of mind.
 
“With L.B. Bohle’s assistance, we were able to level up while expanding out—a best of both world’s scenario that often eludes manufacturers, especially in quality-critical sectors such as natural and nutritional products,” said Marrero. “We’re manufacturing more and more product with the heightened, consistent pharma-grade quality to which we’ve been committed since the company’s inception.”