If a liquid should be sprayed on a powder that acts as a carrier, the Concentrated Powder Form (CPF) technology can be used. In the food industry, there is a large number of products available in powder form, which can be used as carriers for liquid components. But there is a big difference between them in view of the maximum liquid absorption capacity. To find out which attributes affect the liquid absorption capacity of these carriers, several natural substances and model particles with defined uniform diameter and spherical shape were loaded with increasing amounts of different liquids. The aim of this study is to find out more about the casual relationship between the characteristics of powders and liquids, as well as the loading capacity. Therefore, a correlation between the tapped density and the maximum loading capacity is discussed. To determine the maximum loading capacity, a simple method using a filter was developed. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier B.V.