PRESS RELEASE: UNIBIO AND DTU TO TAKE FOOD STEP WITHIN BACTERIAL PROTEIN
Unibio is proud to announce that we have been selected to form part of the PROVIDE project in cooperation with Innovation Fund Denmark.
The aim of the 5-year research project is to increase the value of residual products and optimize resource utilization. The project has a total investment of DKK 14,780,000 (GBP 1,764,000).
When companies extract certain constituent parts from potatoes, seaweedandsingle cell protein for use in various food and feed ingredients, large quantities of residual products with a very low value is the result. The residual products are currently often sold as animal feed or end up as waste products. But the residues contain valuable proteins which, if they can be extracted cheaply and efficiently, are possible to use to produce different additives such as preservatives, flavours and emulsifiers.
In the PROVIDE project scientists from the Technical University of Denmark and Aalborg University, in cooperation with five companies including Unibio, aim to develop tools using knowledge about protein sequences to scan the residual product for valuable proteins with qualities that make them useful in the production of additives. The scientists also aim to develop tools for the cheap and efficient extraction of the exact protein parts which are to be used in this production.
The consumer benefit is that in the future many additives will consist of natural constituent parts of protein, which will increase the protein content of the finished food item.
Unibio’s U-Loop® technology allows the conversion of methane gas into a high-value bacterial protein product, Uniprotein®, which can replace fishmeal and soybean meal in animal and fish feed. Unibio’s vision to decouple protein production from farming and fishing, thus freeing up a larger share of the world’s agricultural land and fishing areas for the production of feed instead of protein for animal feed, may now be expanded to the world of food and feed ingredients by the future development of new products and utilization of all constituents through the PROVIDE project.
Unibio CEO Henrik Busch-Larsen states,”Taking part in the PROVIDE project is a big opportunity for Unibio. Besides collaborating with some very knowledgeable institutions and companies the focus on creating added value from our core protein product holds great potential for the company as so does the feasibility of an already very promising technology.”
