Most gummy ideas don't stall on branding or budget. They stall on manufacturing — a dose that won't fit the base, an active that degrades in the pour, a flavour that can't be masked, or a shape that needs tooling nobody costed. The good news: all of these are knowable up front.
Feasibility here means one thing only: can the product be manufactured as a stable, repeatable gummy? It is not a claim about what the product does for anyone. Five questions decide it, and you can answer most of them before you spend a dollar on development.
This article walks through the five. If you want the earlier groundwork on what "custom" actually means at the base level, read what custom gummies actually mean first — this piece assumes you already know the base is a proven system, not built from scratch.
The five feasibility questions
- Does the active loading fit the base system's ceiling?
- Will the actives survive the pour temperature?
- Can the taste be managed?
- Does the packaging support water activity and shelf life?
- Is the product within food-type supplement scope?
Work through them in order. The first two are usually where a concept passes or fails.
1. Does the active loading fit the base's ceiling?
Every gummy base has a hard ceiling on how much active it can carry per gummy, fixed by the base chemistry — not something MHS can dial up on request.
- Gelatine and gelatine/pectin blend bases carry up to approximately 2 g of actives per gummy. These use sugar and are not vegan.
- Pectin and sugar-free Prebiotic Fibre Pectin bases carry up to approximately 250 mg per gummy. Both are vegan.
That gap drives the single most common feasibility failure: a founder wants a vegan gummy carrying a high dose. Vegan means pectin. Pectin tops out around 250 mg. If your target dose is higher than that and the product must be vegan, the standard base systems can't reach it — and it's far better to know that at brief stage than after a sample run. Where that combination is required, MHS runs a feasibility assessment rather than guessing.
The practical move: settle your active and your per-gummy dose early, because that number chooses your base for you.
2. Will the actives survive the pour temperature?
Gummies are deposited hot. Gelatine bases pour at approximately 71–77°C; pectin bases run hotter, at approximately 93–104°C. The temperature is set by the base chemistry and isn't adjustable.
Heat-sensitive actives can degrade at those temperatures, and the risk is higher in pectin because it runs hotter. This is a manufacturing constraint, not a statement about what the active does — the point is simply whether it survives production intact.
Heat sensitivity is checked at feasibility, not discovered at sample stage. If your active is known to be heat-labile, flag it in your brief so it's assessed against the base you need before development starts.
A related, milder issue: three flavours — Blue Raspberry, Pink Lemonade, and Green Apple — shift colour at pour temperature. That's cosmetic, and the fix is a matching sanding-sugar finish applied after production. It adds a finishing step, not a barrier.
3. Can the taste be managed?
Some functional actives have strong, bitter, or earthy tastes. In a gummy — a format people expect to enjoy eating — taste isn't optional.
Whether an active can be masked depends on the active and the dose. Options include flavour selection from the standard library (17–18 flavours across the sugar-based systems; five for the sugar-free base), custom flavour development from an unflavoured base, or reformulating the flavour approach around the active. Custom flavour development adds steps and timeline, so confirm your flavour direction early.
The feasibility question is honest: at your target dose, can the taste be brought to something people will happily take twice a day? If the active is very strong and the dose is high, that constrains the flavour approach — and occasionally it's the deciding factor.
4. Does the packaging support water activity and shelf life?
Gummies are moisture-sensitive. Each base holds a target water activity (gelatine around 0.65–0.67; pectin around 0.60–0.63), and packaging either protects that or lets it drift. Hygroscopic actives, the wrong pack format, or packaging chosen late all show up as texture and shelf-life problems.
Packaging options include PET jars, glass jars, refill pouches, and cartons, with label application and batch coding included. The feasibility point is timing: packaging needs to be selected before development, not bolted on afterwards, so water-activity behaviour and shelf life are validated for the pack the product will actually ship in. Packaging chosen late is a recurring reason projects loop back for rework.
5. Is the product within food-type supplement scope?
MHS manufactures food-type supplements under FSANZ food standards — not TGA-listed therapeutic goods. Gummy claims must sit within FSANZ Standard 1.2.7: factual inclusion statements ("contains [ingredient]") and permitted nutrient-content framing, with substantiation.
If your concept depends on a therapeutic or disease-related claim to make sense, it's a different regulatory pathway, not a food-type gummy. That's a scope boundary worth checking before formulation, because it determines what you can put on the label.
On the sugar-free Prebiotic Fibre Pectin base, sugar-free (at serving sizes ≤16 g) and contains fibre are available framings without published gram figures. Specific "good source of fibre" gram thresholds are not published here until the serving-size figures are confirmed against the current FSANZ standard.
Base comparison: loading, vegan, and sugar-free at a glance
This is the fastest feasibility filter — match your two non-negotiables (dose and dietary position) to a base:
| Base system | Active loading (approx.) | Vegan | Sugar-free | Pour temp (approx.) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gelatine (uses sugar) | up to ~2 g per gummy | No | No | ~71–77°C |
| Gelatine/pectin blend (uses sugar) | up to ~2 g per gummy | No | No | ~71°C |
| Pectin (uses sugar) | up to ~250 mg per gummy | Yes | No | ~93–104°C |
| Prebiotic Fibre Pectin (sugar-free) | up to ~250 mg per gummy | Yes | Yes (serving ≤16 g) | ~93–104°C |
Read it as a decision tool: high dose points you to gelatine; vegan points you to pectin; sugar-free points you to the one sugar-free base; and "vegan + high dose" points you to a feasibility assessment, because no standard base does both.
Frequently asked questions
Usually no. Vegan means pectin, and pectin carries up to about 250 mg of actives per gummy. High loading (up to ~2 g) needs gelatine, which isn't vegan. Where you need both, MHS runs a feasibility assessment rather than assuming it can be done.
Only up to the base's ceiling — about 2 g per gummy for gelatine bases, about 250 mg for pectin bases. Above that, the concept needs rethinking or a different format.
It can. Gelatine pours at ~71–77°C and pectin at ~93–104°C. Heat-sensitive actives are assessed at feasibility so any degradation risk is known before a sample run, not after.
Bring your active, rough per-gummy dose, whether it must be vegan or sugar-free, and your flavour direction. That's enough to tell you quickly whether it works as a standard gummy.