Novasep and Nutritis Announce the Scale-up Production of Nutritis’ Fructose

Novasep’s role in scaling up this patented process helped Nutritis close a EUR 13.5M financing round and acquire a fructose unit exclusively for fruit processing.

22 Nov 2010 --- Nutritis, a company specialized in the development of functional ingredients from fruit, and Novasep Process, a division of Novasep, a leading innovator in purification
technologies for the life science industries, announce that, thanks to Novasep Process, Nutritis will scale up its production process for fructose from apple juice.

Nutritis brought in Novasep to use the latter’s purification expertise to scale up its innovative process. Nutritis and Novasep have been working together since 2007 on the development of natural sugars extracted from fruit. They have focused on the separation and purification process for fructose from apple juice originally developed by CRITT bioindustries, part of INSA, France’s national institute for applied sciences.

Today fructose, a sugar present in most foodstuffs, is mainly produced by the hydrolysis of sucrose from sugar beet, sugar cane or maize starch. Nutritis has developed a patented process which enables the production of fructose that can be labeled as 100 per cent fruit. This fructose is obtained from fruit that fails to meet certain food industry standards (size, appearance etc). Novasep Process carried out the optimization of the scaling up of this bioprocess, allowing Nutritis to access a market with high demand for natural sugars extracted from fruit.

The importance of being 100 per cent fruit means the fructose qualifies for the “clean label”, a much sought-after seal of approval for all fruit-based preparations, from dairy products to jams. With its sweetening power some 50 per cent greater than that of traditional sugars, use of fructose means manufacturers can also reduce the calorie count of their products.

The attractive business opportunity offered by this product and the robustness of the technology coupled with the production scale-up capability were significant in Nutritis’ raising EUR 13.5 million. The financing means that the Grap’Sud cooperative group now holds 52 per cent of Nutritis. The new funding will enable Nutritis to start investment in and marketing of the industrial process on Grap’Sud sites in Rieux and Cruviers Lascours in southern France.

“Nutritis’ patented process for the separation and purification of fructose solves the problem of using fruit that cannot otherwise be sold by extracting a fructose that can be described as 100 per cent fruit,” said Pierre Lapoujade, President at Nutritis. “Novasep has been a valuable partner for scaling up the process and convincing Grap’Sud to invest in Nutritis. We plan to continue working on new developments with Novasep.”

“Novasep is delighted to have been able to bring its expertise and know-how to bear for Nutritis,” said Antoine Baule, President at Novasep Process. “The project has been totally successful and demonstrated Novasep’s ability to turn pilot operations into production-line processes in partnership with our customers.”