Orkla Food Ingredients partners on acrylamide-reducing yeast

Orkla Food Ingredients has signed a licence agreement with Canadian bioscience company Renaissance to bring its acrylamide-reducing yeast to food manufacturers in Europe.

Orkla will begin offering the Renaissance yeast from the third quarter of the year, available in Nordic and Baltic markets.

It comes amid heightened awareness of the level of acrylamide in food, after various foodstuffs were found to contain excessive levels of acrylamide in Europe – including potato chips, snack biscuits and – crucially – bakery items.

By using Renaissance’s acrylamide-reducing yeast, manufacturers will gain an inherent way of limiting the amount of acrylamide in products using yeast.

“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,” said Thore Svensson, senior vice-president of Orkla Food Ingredients.

Renaissance BioScience chief business development officer Cormac O’Cleirigh added: “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.”

The acrylamide-lowering yeast has shown promising results in large-scale industrial trials in baked goods and snack foods, as well as in lab-scale tests in fries and coffee. The yeast was granted GRAS status by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2016 — the same status as conventional baker’s and brewer’s yeasts – and is currently patent pending.

It was developed using ‘classical non-GMO techniques’, Orkla said. Renaissance is currently working with the Norwegian company on final product development and commercial rollout.