Fats and oils focus: Altered states

The fats and oils ingredient markets is changing rapidly. As consumer demand has pushed health and wellbeing up the agenda, firms are having to develop new products at ever-increasing speed. That means further collaboration with manufacturers, according to Dr Gerhard de Ruiter, head of innovation at oil and ingredients firm Sime Darby. That's why Sime Darby has opened a new European Innovation Centre to work on the latest developments with food processors.

De Ruiter says that it is about more than the ingredients. The new centre allows Sime Darby to help manufacturers with the entire process. "We recently developed a new computer model where we can predict and calculate the functionality of any fat formulation without doing any experiments," he says. For example, this has allowed Sime Darby to help firms find the optimum speed and temperature on their production lines to produce the best product as quickly as possible. It is ideas like this that have changed the nature of the ingredients market from a simple seller/buyer model to one where cooperation and collaboration are the name of the game, says de Ruiter.

Reducing the fat in fat​

While helping manufacturers improve efficiency is a noble side goal, the main objective is still improving the ingredients. In its European Innovation Centre, Sime Darby has developed a new oil processing pilot plant where it has been able to perform tests on a different methods of filtration.

Oil is filtered through a bed consisting of plastic beads about one millimetre in diameter, which have enzymes derived from bacterial or fungal sources attached to them. Because the enzymes are attached to the beads, they can work on the oil without ending up in the finished product.

Using enzymes to help process oils has enabled Sime Darby to combine two characteristics normally in competition: creating a functional product that retains fat characteristics while reducing the level of saturated fats. De Ruiter says that with the production of margarines, for example, it is important that the fats are able to stay relatively hard, but spreadable at temperatures of up to 18 to 19°C but then quickly melt in the mouth all without developing the waxy feeling on the tongue that is associated with a fat melting too slowly. "Enzyme technology allows us to develop products that have a sharper profile while at the same time has a fatty acid composition that better fits into the current health requirements demanded by consumers," he says, "It allows us to tailor the functionality of the oil. We are able to specifically design some of the physics of the vegetables oils we produce."

The enzyme-filtered oil also makes for a more environmentally friendly manufacturing process. Because many of the tropical oils used such as palm, palm kernel and coconut oil become solids in the temperate climes of Europe, traditional operating procedures have to heat them to about 120°C. De Ruiter says enzyme-treated oils only need to be heated to 65 to 78°C, which leads to a significant reduction in energy. He also says that wastewater is a prevalent by-product of traditional filtration methods, but filtering oil through an enzyme bed eliminates its use entirely.

According to data from market research company Mintel, sales of spreads have been falling in the yellow fats market. Although Flora has bucked the trend, most other brands have lost ground to butters. Efficiency savings garnered through the use of enzyme-filtered oils could prove to be a boost for manufacturers during a tight period.

Reducing saturated fats while maintaining functionality has also been an area of interest in other organisations.

Leatherhead Food Research (LFR) has been hard at work reducing the saturated fat content in fat ingredients through another method: cryo-crystallisation. Head of ingredients and product innovation at LFR, Dr Wayne Morley says that cryo-crystallisation is a process whereby atomised liquid fats and oils come into contact with liquid nitrogen. They solidify instantly into free-flowing particles, which results in an end product with a lower saturated fat content. LFR has been running trials with short crust pastry using this method and found that the dough had properties such as stickiness, dryness and fat migration that were very close to those of its full-fat counterpart. He hopes that further testing could lead to it being used in a wide variety of applications, such as margarines, chocolates and doughs.

Unilever has also been conducting trials with enzyme filtration and crystallisation for its spread, Flora. "Enzymatic trials have taken place and different methods of creating the crystallisation within the product are also being tested," says Unilever Foodsolutions marketing director, Claire Sullivan.

She adds that their current lowered saturated fat content was achieved through a series of trials designed to find the blend of oils that gave the correct crystal structure together with the correct flavour release, while maintaining temperature stability.

Increasing the good​

Reducing the presence of unwanted compounds in fats and oils is one way to make them healthier. But creating products that retain more of the naturally occurring healthy compounds is also of interest.

Refining and filtering of palm oil in particular has led to healthier oils though the retention of nutrients through new refining techniques. Natural palm oil is a dark red because of the presence of high levels of beta-carotene. However, traditional refining techniques lose the beta-carotene while trying to remove off-flavour components from the oil, says De Ruiter.

Traditionally after removing dirt, water and some fatty acids and lipids the oil is bleached before 'deodorisation', where the power of steam and vacuum is used to remove volatiles and other off-taste compounds. It is at this stage, because of the high temperature, that the carotene is removed and carried away with the steam.

"With the new product we changed the conditions for deodorisation. It sounds easy to just change the temperature, but on the one hand you want to remove all the smelly compounds and on the other you want to retain the colour. Control is key and it required new technology in order to be done on a factory scale," says de Ruiter.

The new refining process, developed by Sime Darby, that led to Vitolio the trade name for Sime Darby's red coloured oil allows amounts of the beta-carotene, as well as significant amounts of naturally occurring Vitamin E, to be retained in the final product. De Ruiter says that at least 500ppm of beta-carotene, as well as 800ppm of Vitamin E, stay in the final product. Under the latest European food legislation, there is no need to list the beta-carotene as a separate colouring on the label as it is a natural part of the oil, he says.

Both the Vitamin E and the beta-carotene are also antioxidants. De Ruiter adds that, as well as providing the health benefits associated with antioxidants, their presence gives the added advantage of extended shelf-life to products containing Vitolio due to the way they help to stave off deterioration in food products. The beta-carotene's natural redness can then be used to give foods a shade anywhere from light orange to red he says. The antioxidation properties of Vitolio also help in the process of deep fat frying, which produces undesirable flavour compounds and changes the flavour stability and quality of the oil. Antioxidation helps stabilise deep-fat frying oil and inhibits the progress of this.

Behind the scenes​

However, the creation of Vitolio would not have been possible without a significant rethink of the agricultural and harvesting side of the palm oil trade. To keep the beta-carotene in the finished product, an improved crude oil had to be used at the start of the filtration process. To achieve this, Sime Darby started to take the palm oil fruit from the tree slightly before it had become fully ripe. The fruit is then processed within 24 hours, instead of being left for the usual period of up to three days. This produced a much better quality crude oil, which is essential to the process, says De Ruiter.

Because timing has become so important to the process, De Ruiter says the company had to improve its documentation and monitoring at the plantations. Fortunately for it, Sime Darby was implementing new controls, monitoring and documentation procedures to bring its plantations in line with the requirements of the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) a multi-stakeholder organisation that develops criteria for the certification of sustainable palm oil, which dove-tailed nicely into the creation of its new harvesting technique.

Sustainable palm oil is a hot topic and the RSPO criteria are being implemented at a fast pace. Sime Darby hopes to bring all of its plantations into line by the end of 2011. This fits with the general trend developing in the fats and oils sector. According to Mintel, there has been a shift in new product development (NPD) towards naturalness and flavour.

Ideas such as fat reduction and increasing retention of the natural goodness of palm oil will help the industry continue that trend. But with NPD levels in the fats and oils sector remaining low compared with many other markets, implementation of the new techniques cannot come quickly enough.