Beyond The Headlines: Azelis inks deal with Soy Austria, Tyson expands poultry business

01 Dec 2023 --- In this week’s industry news, Azelis announced a new partnership with Soy Austria. Also, Tyson Foods unveiled an innovative, fully-cooked food production plant in Virginia, US, to bolster its business growth. Meanwhile, Australian farmers reportedly gave away free sheep amid a slump in mutton prices.

Business highlights
Azelis joined forces with Soy Austria for the Central European food and nutrition market. Soy Austria formulates natural, sustainable and soy-based ingredients, including grits, flour, flakes and textured soy protein, covering applications from bakery and confectionery to dairy-free and savory. Azelis’ customers in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary now have access to a wide range of high-quality, non-GMO soy products. The partnership will help Soy Austria leverage Azelis’ technical and market knowledge to reach new customers and expand its business. 

Tyson Foods opened its new US$300 million fully-cooked food production facility in Danville, Virginia, US, to accelerate its long-term growth and invest in its poultry business. It is one of the company’s most automated plants, marking the deployment of innovation pilots and prototypes at scale.The plant is spread across a 325,000-square-foot area and will produce approximately four million pounds of fully-cooked poultry products.

Bioriginal acquired all the operating assets of Softgel to expand its nutrition products further into the US. This is the company’s fourth business acquisition in 2023 and includes a state-of-the-art softgel, squeeze tube and tincture manufacturing facility specializing in encapsulating human and pet nutrition products. The investment removes the need for Bioriginal to outsource softgel production, improving its production efficiencies and enhancing supply chain management. 

Tyson Foods' 325,000-square-foot facility in Virginia, US will produce nearly four million pounds of premium quality, fully-cooked poultry products weekly (Image credit: Tyson Foods).RSSL, a food and pharmaceutical contract research organization, opened its new state-of-the-art analytical testing facility on the University of Reading Whiteknights campus, UK. The new premises aim to increase RSSL’s capacity to meet the growing demand of its global client base and add an extra 26,000-square-foot of working laboratory space to the establishment’s existing facilities.

Sustainable food and farming
Bureau Veritas, a global leader in testing, inspection and certification, announced that its AgriFood Laboratory in Cape Town, South Africa, has successfully transitioned to solar power. The move enables it to operate independently of South Africa’s national electricity grid and is a significant step toward achieving environmental sustainability through reduced carbon emissions. The laboratory can operate at full capacity, 24 hours a day and without interruptions, catering to industrial hubs and those running the winelands, farming regions, fruit orchards, wheatlands and rooibos fields.

WWF warned supermarkets of slow progress in halving the environmental impact of groceries. It says that the clock is ticking to reduce the environmental footprint of shopping baskets by 50% before 2030 and pressed for more concerted efforts to overhaul the UK’s food system. The NGO’s new report ‘What’s in Store for the Planet 2023’ highlighted various gaps across seven critical areas, including climate emissions, agriculture, diets, deforestation, marine impact, food waste and packaging. The WWF chief urged the UK government to urgently implement long overdue regulations to meet its high-profile COP26 promise to eliminate deforestation and enforce conversion from UK supply chains.

Advanced vertical farming solutions provider Urban Crop Solutions partnered with BASF, which provides innovative solutions for sustainable agriculture. It also installed a state-of-the-art solution for creating a controlled and efficient environment for cultivating and studying various weed species. The installation will be used to sustainably accelerate the development of different projects related to new agricultural solutions.

Urban Crop's vertical farming solutions create a controlled and efficient environment for cultivating weed species (Image credit: Urban Crop Solutions).The oversupply of sheep in Australia has reportedly compelled farmers to give away sheep for free or cull them to save costs instead of rearing them on farms. This has lowered the livestock prices, as opposed to the record mutton prices three years ago. Commenting on why ranchers kept more sheep on-farm instead of fattening them and sending them to slaughterhouses and markets, Sheep Producers Australia stated prolonged rains spells extended market buoyancy, driving farmers to retain sheep. As a result, the numbers continued to grow. Now, some farmers are considering not mating their ewes to reduce costs, which could lead to a fall in young sheep numbers, risking a mutton undersupply.

Launches and innovation
Bühler announced that its Flavor Creation Center, part of the company’s recently expanded food innovation hub in Uzwil, Switzerland, is functioning fully. The center combines Bühler’s expertise in roasting and grinding cocoa and coffee beans and processing malt and nuts to create innovative flavors and future-fit products. The plant allows customers to develop recipes and test processes under one roof while providing technological solutions like cleaning, de-shelling, alkalizing and roasting (batch and continuous roasting) to formulate high-quality cocoa mass, cocoa butter and cocoa powder.

Neumann Kaffee Gruppe (NKG) partnered with Satelligence to ensure its coffee supply chains are EUDR compliant and that its exports to the EU meet the regulation’s deforestation-free requirements. Satelligence will supply near real-time observation of forest loss in and around millions of farms that supply coffee to NKG exporters. NKG uses this remote sensing data and informative map layers to improve the accuracy of its deforestation mitigation data in Honduras and Uganda, in turn minimizing the need for expensive ground surveys. The partnership allows NKG to provide its farmers with relevant alerts about wildfires, support smallholder inclusion and NKG’s broader sustainability goals and exercise more control over their supply chain data, improving efficiency and saving time.

By Insha Naureen