We investigated how secondary additives for tableting vanadium-aluminummixed-oxides affect the mechanical resistance, surface chemistry, and catalytic performance inpropane oxidation of tablets based on this material. The secondary additives were magnesium oxide, silica, boron nitride, sepiolite, and zinc oxide while graphite was used as the primaryshaping agent. Our results showed that the changes in mechanical strength and porosity weredirectly related to the softness and ductility of the secondary additive. Overall, we learned thatwhen manufacturing catalyst tablets, there is a compromise between mechanical strength andloss in mesoporosity and surface area. On the other hand, the components of the formulatedtablets did not show signs of establishing a chemical interaction with the vanadium-aluminummixed oxide. Therefore, the effects of the additives that we found on the catalytic performancewere ascribed to the fact that the selected secondary additives may act as co-catalysts duringpropane oxidation. In this sense, boron nitride and sepiolite were best for promoting both thereactivity of the catalytic formulations while showing a better productivity of propene. The datawas interpreted suggesting that the promotion effect may be due to the combination of a redoxmechanism over the vanadium-aluminum mixed oxide phase and to a surface radical mechanismoccurring over the active moieties of these secondary additives.