Valorising Food Waste into Multifunctional Fibres
This technology encompasses a novel process to creating functional fibres from waste fruit, vegetable or seaweed biomasses. With the rise of consumers wanting clean-label or natural products, the demand for new and more natural ingredients within the food sector has increased. To meet this challenge, there has been a surge of new “functional” fibre products that bring technical or textural functionality to food systems. Highly functional fibres show superior texturising, stabilising and fat mimicking functionality that until recently, had only been provided by traditional food ingredients (i.e. agar, carrageenan, pectin, alginate, methylcellulose etc).
This technology is aimed at food ingredient/bioprocessing companies with access to food waste/seaweed biomasses, who would like valorise these streams. Applicable biomasses include carrot waste, seed oil cakes, protein extraction waste, citrus peel, juicing waste or various other sources. The streams can be evaluated for active ingredients and can be converted into various types of functional fibres. Once fibre functionality is optimised any new fibre products can be evaluated within pre-trailed applications for marketing purposes for the producer.