BRAIN and Südzucker Intensify Co-operation on Functional Carbohydrates

Overall objective of the collaboration is the sustainable fermentative and enzymatic production of functional carbohydrates with nutritional and technical benefits for the food industry.

24 Sep 2009 --- BRAIN AG a leading European White Biotechnology company and the food company and largest sugar producer within the EU, the Südzucker AG, further intensify their long-term research cooperation. The joint research program aims at optimizing the production processes of functional carbohydrates in terms of product yield and energy efficiency. Overall objective of the collaboration is the sustainable fermentative and enzymatic production of functional carbohydrates with nutritional and technical benefits for the food industry.

Already today an increasing part of sugar from sugar-beets is being further refined to high-quality speciality ingredients with specific health benefits, as e.g. Isomalt or Palatinose,. For the production of these specialities more and more biological processes are used. Within the co-operation, which is partly funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), BRAIN and Südzucker are optimizing a biological production process for Palatinose, the only toothfriendly sugar with additional health benefits, produced and mar-keted by BENEO, a 100% subsidiary of Südzucker.

An optimised production process shall lead to a reduced energy consumption as well as to a lower number of the complex product purification steps. During a first operational phase of the co-operation an important milestone was achieved by significantly increasing in the efficiency of the production process. This joint success resulted in further expanding and continuing the partnership.

“Through the collaboration with BRAIN we want to improve the industrial processes for the sustainable production of specialities for functional food products“, says Dr. Wolfgang Wach, Head of Biotechnology within the Südzucker AG. “The co-operation with BRAIN completes and expedites our own research activities within that segment. The first, very promising results confirm that we, together with our strategic partner BRAIN will achieve our goals.“

“We are glad, that we achieved the first milestone in the biological optimisation of production processes of sugar specialities earlier than initially planned. With these results new ways for a more efficient, sustainable production were achieved“, says Dr. Jürgen Eck, CTO of BRAIN AG. “We are proud that Südzucker expanded the co-operation with us and see ourselves confirmed that with the help of enzymatic and biotechnological processes both efficiency and sustainability of production processes can be improved.“

Within Südzucker the specialty segment grew permanently throughout the last years. In the past business year 2008/09 the segment participated with a significant part of 1.43 bn € (2007/08: 1.28 bn €) of the total revenues of 5.87 bn. €. Within the newly formed BENEO Group of Südzucker, food ingredients with nutritional and technological advantages are marketed in over 70 countries all over the world.