A difficult area of fluid sealing, and one that often gets overlooked by technical reviews and research, is the sealing of abrasive pastes, food products and dry powders. There is often nothing very quantifiable for the researcher or designer to use as a starting point. In the food and pharmaceutical industries there is the additional problem of maintaining product integrity and the necessity to be able to sterilize the seal components, which can cause additional technical obstacles. In the Editor’s work in R&D, this type of problem has often had no really obvious answer available. So, I have noted with interest the availability of a seal arrangement that appears to cater for some of these duties.