Unit operation
Milling and micronisation toll manufacturing
For solids that need a tighter particle size than they left the dryer with — down to micronised grades for actives and pigments.
Live listings
No verified unit lists Milling & micronisation capacity yet. Listings appear here the day our desk approves them, and the guide below is how we qualify one when it does.
Post your requirement and our broker desk looks for the capacity by hand, or list your own unit if you run one.
What milling & micronisation on job work involves
Milling is bought as toll manufacturing because the right mill for a product is rarely the one already on site, and because fine powders bring containment and dust-explosion demands that are easier to meet in a dedicated unit. Agrochemical technicals going into wettable powders and water-dispersible granules, pharmaceutical intermediates and actives, pigments and fillers all pass through toll milling.
Hammer and pin mills take material to the tens of microns; air-jet mills micronise to single-digit D90 values without heating the product; ball and bead mills serve pigment dispersions. Classification and metal detection sit around the mill. The specification is a particle-size distribution measured by laser diffraction on the actual product, not a mill setting.
What to check before you send an enquiry
The questions our desk puts to a unit before it qualifies an enquiry for Milling & micronisation. A listing answers most of them; the trial batch answers the rest.
- Mill type for your target: pin or hammer for fine grinding, air-jet for micronisation, with the D50 and D90 achieved on comparable material.
- Containment and operator protection for potent or toxic solids — isolators, extraction, and how the plant handles the hazard class.
- Dust-explosion protection: inerting with nitrogen for organic powders, earthing, venting or suppression, and the documented basis for it.
- Cross-contamination: dedicated mills for colours or actives, cleaning validation, and metal detection or sieving before packing.
- In-house particle-size analysis so the batch is released the same day.
Where the capacity is
Pharma micronisation concentrates in Pashamylaram and Jeedimetla; agro and pigment milling in Vatva and Ankleshwar; specialty powders around Ambernath for the Mumbai formulators.
Industries served
Common questions
- What is micronising?
- Micronising is reducing a solid to particles measured in single-figure microns, typically to increase surface area, dissolution rate or bioavailability. In practice it means a jet mill, where the material is accelerated in compressed air or nitrogen and broken by particle-on-particle collision rather than by a moving blade.
- What is the difference between milling and micronisation?
- Milling is the general act of size reduction and covers everything from a hammer mill producing hundreds of microns to a pin mill producing tens. Micronisation is the fine end of that range, usually below about ten microns, and needs a different machine. Ask for the target particle size first; it decides the mill, and the mill decides the price.
- Which mill reaches which particle size?
- Hammer and impact mills handle coarse reduction down to a few hundred microns. Pin and universal mills reach tens of microns. Jet or fluid-energy mills, sometimes called micronisers, reach single-figure microns without heating the product. A plant that owns only one of these can serve only one part of the range.
- How is particle size agreed and verified?
- By naming the method and the percentile: laser diffraction reporting d10, d50 and d90 is the common language, and sieve analysis suits coarser work. Specify the distribution rather than an average, since two powders with the same mean can behave completely differently downstream.
Other unit operations
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