Van Manen has worked for Duynie, a Cosun subsidiary, for nearly 30 years. He can effortlessly list the years marking the company’s milestone developments. “In 2001 Duynie decided that they could do more than just collect and dispose of co-products (which is how Van Manen prefers to call residual flows or sidestream products).
Co-products for food
“The goal is to increasingly use co-products for food applications. In the end, the company’s profitability is a major consideration, and the margins are higher for food. In 2015 we settled on protein as our research theme. The main question was: how can we efficiently valorise protein from co-products for human consumption, and what directions do we want to pursue? Although the livestock industry offers an attractive circular solution for co-products, it does imply lost income for us.” The research theme resulted in three new directions: supplying food for insect farming, producing protein from microbes through fermentation, and biorefinery to separate components from residual flows which can be reused separately.
Duynie has become active in the first direction, supplying raw materials to insect farmers. According to Van Manen, the second direction is still furthest from market implementation. For the third direction, a lot of research has already been performed and market launches are impending. One example is a project investigating how to separate protein and fibre from brewers’ grains, which can then be reused for protein drinks, meat substitutes, snacks and bakery products. These components should be launched on the business-to-business market soon. “We notice a huge amount of interest for this development in the foodstuff industry. Companies are spontaneously contacting us with their wish to experiment with the protein sourced from brewers’ grains. We are still working to improve the protein’s physical properties, as these are not yet optimal. But we are convinced that this is a valuable protein source that could be used for instance as a substitute for soya.”
No competition
Van Manen does not expect that the new applications for the human food industry will cause competition among the different sales markets. Livestock feed is and will remain the largest market by far in terms of tonnes. “The sale of co-products to the livestock industries in the Netherlands is very well organised. Co-products fetch a fair price here and the livestock sector is of a sufficient volume to process all the residual streams in the Netherlands. There is a nice kind of symbiosis between the livestock sector and the food industry. This makes it difficult to make new applications economically feasible.
Van Manen thinks it’s more likely that further sales opportunities will be sought in sectors where the sale of co-products is less well organised. “In some countries outside Europe, residual flows are spread out on the land because they have no other use for it. The need to create new and profitable sales markets is greater there.” Van Manen anticipates that the food ingredients sourced from brewers’ grains will become a significant business for Duynie, in the Netherlands and/or abroad. Duynie operates throughout Europe and has a consultancy branch that advises businesses on what to do with their co-products. “This way we continue looking for the best solutions for the co-products.”
Brewer’s grains in the picture for foodstuff
Duynie is not the only company investigating new applications for brewers’ grains. Already, there are products on the market containing ingredients sourced from brewers’ grains. Beer brewer Swinkels Family Brewers recently presented a sausage roll that uses dough made with brewers’ grains. Tetra Pak has patented a system that makes brewers’ grains suitable for use in the foodstuff industry. This company is a producer of machines for food processing and food packaging and has developed a technique that enables a longer-term preservation of brewers’ grains. The shelf life of brewers’ grains is one of the limiting factors to use co-product in food.
Globally, around 39 million tonnes of brewer’s grain are produced annually, of which 3.4 million tonnes are produced in the EU. Brewer’s grains contains 30 to 50% fibre and 15 to 25% protein. Essential amino acids represent around 30% of the protein content, with lysine the most prevalent type.