High-intensity mixer/dissolver is easy to keep clean and requires little maintenance.

When mixing powders there’s always the possibility of introducing foreign matter, Smith explains. These should get picked up by the strainers during CIP, but with conventional mixing equipment they tend to get stuck in the impeller. “You would have to go in and pull the impeller up, and get the strings and the paper and whatever else that had gotten onto that impeller,” says Smith. And with difficult-to-clean mixers, there’s always the possibility that someone doesn’t do a good job of cleaning every time. Then you’re fighting coliform and bacteria counts in your products.