Orkla Food Ingredients, a subsidiary of Orkla ASA, has signed a licence agreement with Renaissance BioScience Corp to exclusively produce and sell Renaissance acrylamide-reducing yeast to food manufacturers in the Nordic and Baltic markets.
The Norwegian food company says that the agreement will come into effect in the third quarter of 2017.
Renaissance is a Canadian-based company that develops yeast-based, patent-protected technologies for the global food, beverage, nutrition, biofuel and pharmaceutical industries.
Thore Svensson, senior vice president of Orkla Food Ingredients, said, “Renaissance’s acrylamide-reducing yeast has shown promising results in baked goods trials, and Orkla is pleased to be working with Renaissance to make this valuable advance in food safety available to food manufacturers.”
Product Development
The Renaissance acrylamide-reduced yeast was granted GRAS status (generally recognised as safe) by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2016 — the same status as conventional baker and brewer yeasts.
Renaissance is currently working with Orkla on final product development and commercial rollout.
Dr. Cormac O’Cleirigh, chief business development officer at Renaissance BioScience said, “Orkla is the market leader in the Nordics and Baltics, and we’re pleased to be working with a partner that sees the importance of reducing acrylamide in the food supply.
“This is a key region for the introduction of our acrylamide-reducing yeast, given that it is where the presence of acrylamide has the highest level of consumer awareness.”
Orkla recently announced the purchase of 80% of the shares of SR Foods, the Danish sales and distribution company, which the Norwegian group can now use to enhance their distribution of yeast.
© 2017 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Aidan O'Sullivan. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
