Paving the way for success with plant-based ingredients

Demand for plant-based ingredients is growing, but building a profitable and scalable food ingredients business is becoming more difficult. Now, the RETHINK project by VTT and the Finnish food industry has shown that achieving profitability in the sector requires a new way of thinking: value should be created from every stream generated in plant ingredient production, new ingredients need to be developed to suit their targeted end use, and companies and other operators must strive for closer cooperation. The project has also produced several tangible inventions.

Many current business models focus on plant protein production, which means a significant share of the raw material value is not maximally used. For example, peas yield protein for meat substitutes, but its carbohydrate-rich side streams often end up as animal feed with a considerably lower economic value than that of protein products. According to the experts working in RETHINK, profitable production models require creating added value from every fraction generated in ingredient production.

“Globally, food production is shifting towards more local and distributed production models, as companies and societies strive to strengthen their resilience,” said Emilia Nordlund, responsible leader of the project at VTT.

“It is especially critical to find the high-value use cases for carbohydrate-rich fractions, as they often comprise the largest share of the raw material. We should be boldly looking for uses beyond the food sector too. In cosmetics, for example.”

According to the project’s experts, growth also requires closer collaboration among food system operators. Farmers, ingredient producers, food companies, investors and decision-makers need to build shared practices that reduce supply risks and enable production to scale. Investment-ready production models enable planning for raw material availability, quality, processing, end-use applications and commercial routes as a unified whole.

New solutions and processing inventions

One example of cross-company collaboration in the RETHINK project is the shared development work by Viking Malt and Valio, which produced a solution made from germinated faba bean protein granules for the plant-based and hybrid meat product market.

“Viking Malt’s experience with germination and Valio’s commercialisation know-how made it possible to create an entirely new kind of food product,” said Susanna Kallio, Vice President, Plant-Based Business at Valio, and Xin Huang, Group R&D Manager at Viking Malt.

The new solutions developed by VTT during the project are geared towards securing locally profitable production as well as manufacturing nutritionally valuable ingredients and end products without complex processing. For example, enzyme-assisted processing methods reduce chemical use and improve the functionality of ingredients.

“In RETHINK, we patented an entirely new way to concentrate and apply oat dietary fibre, beta-glucan. This invention makes it possible to add fibre to liquid products so that the fibre stays intact while the liquid remains pourable and without a paste-like texture,” Nordlund said.

VTT researchers also developed a new pre-treatment technique for the protein separation process, which prevents the unpleasant off-flavours typical of legume-based ingredients and expands the possibilities for using legumes in food products.

Research carried out under RETHINK also helped advance the technology commercialised by VTT spin-off Happy Plant Protein from the development stage towards commercial readiness. The new technology separates protein from carbohydrates and texturises the protein using only a single process step.

Image caption: Sensory evaluation of pea samples at VTT.