How fermentation technology is shaping food and beverage production
Fermentation technology continues to evolve – from new product concepts in traditional categories to fermentation-derived ingredients and New Food products reaching commercial scale.
Whatever your end product, and whether you are optimising an established line or exploring new territory, we can help you perfect the fine art of fermentation – and turn it into a competitive advantage.
An ancient process, offering opportunities today
Fermentation has shaped food production for thousands of years. A beer-type beverage was brewed in China around 7,000 BC; the Egyptians produced fermented dairy products such as cheese and yoghurt from circa 3,000 BC.1
Processes commonly considered new have deep roots – deeper than many realise. An early form of biomass fermentation can be traced back to 18th-century Indonesia, where soya beans were fermented to make tempeh.2 By the 1990s, precision fermentation was being used to produce rennet that was both cheaper and of higher quality than conventional alternatives.3
Today, the controlled use of microorganisms at industrial scale is central to manufacturing, preserving and enriching food and beverages worldwide.
Meeting the sugar-reduction challenge in fruit juices
The juice industry has long wrestled with the challenge of reducing the sugar level of juice products, while maintaining quality and consumer appeal. Our new approach to this problem reduces sugar through controlled fermentation, followed by removal of the yeast and alcohol. The resulting zero-sugar juice can then be blended with ordinary juice to achieve any level of sugar reduction desired. The concept has been proven in technical and consumer tests, and offers you a broad opportunity to create an entirely new product category – reduced-sugar juices and drinks. Our new white paper describes processing solutions for fermentation, yeast removal and dealcoholisation, as well as final blending.
1 Source: Prajapati JB, and Nair BM. The History of Fermented Foods. Handbook of Fermented Functional Foods, edited by Farnworth ER, 2nd ed., CRC Press, 2017.
2 Source: Shurtleff, William and Aoyagi, Akiko. History of Tempeh. www.soyinfocenter.com p. 1.
3 Source: Child, Stella. The history of precision fermentation: How the future of food has been on your plate for decades. Gfi/Europe, https://gfieurope.org/blog/the-history-of-precision-fermentation-how-the-future-of-food-has-been-on-your-plate-for-decades/