War on diabetes: New Nutrition Innovation technology slashes sugar while boosting protein and fibre
The company’s latest technology offering is the award-winning Nucane Life, a new natural sugar carbohydrate.
“[Nucane Life] can help food brands achieve sugar reduction of up to 70% while integrating a range of substrates for additional health benefits such a protein and fibre,” Nutrition Innovation CEO Matthew Godfrey told us.
“We [prioritised the invention of this] technology, [as we believe it can] rapidly help the world’s brands meet the obesity and health challenge.”
Dr Kannar added that this was achieved via what they deem ‘fluffy bulk’ technology, leading to a low glycaemic response.
“It is a technology that ‘wraps around’ amorphous substrates such as protein, fibre and sweeteners. There are three variations of this technology: Utilising Nucane Energy increases protein in the product, Nucane Fit increases fibre, and Nucane Low uses intense sweeteners to reduce sugar content even further.”
Nucane Life was recently named one of the Top Five Best Ingredients of the year at the 2019 World Food Innovation Awards. The technology is currently still being trialled with major food companies, and will not be commercially available until Q4 this year.
Presence in APAC region
The Nucane Low Glycaemic raw sugar technology is, however, currently already available in what the company deemed ‘key sugar production markets’, including Australia, Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa. Following sugar exports from these countries, Nucane also has reach in Europe and North America.
“One of the markets that has been fastest to embrace this innovation is Malaysia,” said Dr Kannar.
“Through our partnerships with leading sugar producer CSR, a retail version of Nucane Raw called ‘Better Brown’ has been launched in the country, receiving strong support from Malaysian consumers and retailers,.”
The company is also retailing its sugar via Sunshine Sugar in Australia, as well as seeing more food manufacturers and food service outlets use Nucane in the manufacturing of food products such as jams and confectionary.
“In the APAC region, we have interest from all markets and with our production partners and global sugar trading partner, Enerfo, customers can already price and import Nucane for domestic use,” he added.
Natural sugar as the sugar crisis solution
Another key benefit of the Nucane range is that it can be incorporated into existing production chains without the need for major CAPEX changes.
“[Nucane is] efficient to licence, produce and scale, and is [produced using] existing industry supply chains that meet regulation and food safety requirements, and does not involve any artificial chemicals or GMO,” added Godfrey.
“The global solution to the sugar crisis, can be natural sugar.”
Nutrition Innovation has just completed a Series A funding led by VisVires New Protein (VVNP), which claims to be the ‘first venture fund in Asia focusing exclusively on finding disruptive solutions for our global food and feed system’.
Although the funding amount was not disclosed, VVNP Founder and Managing Partner Matthieu Vermersch said: “Food ingredients, like sugar, are [essential] but extremely challenging to replace in food products.
“The value proposition of Nutrition Innovation is compelling not just for the sugar mills and refineries, but also for food manufacturers and consumers.”
