Fructose Purification from Substandard Fruit

Nutritis, a company specialiSed in the development of functional ingredients from fruit, and Novasep Process, a division of Novasep, announced that, thanks to Novasep Process, Nutritis will scale up its production process for fructose from apple juice.

Nutritis brought in Novasep to use the latter’s purification expertise to scale up its innovative process. Nutritis and Novasep have been working together since 2007 on the development of natural sugars extracted from fruit. They have focused on the separation and purification process for fructose from apple juice originally developed by CRITT bioindustries, part of INSA, France’s national institute for applied sciences.

Today fructose, a sugar present in most foodstuffs, is mainly produced by the hydrolysis of sucrose from sugar beet, sugar cane or maize starch. Nutritis has developed a patented process, which enables the production of fructose that can be labeled as 100% fruit. This fructose is obtained from fruit that fails to meet certain food industry standards. Novasep Process carried out the optimisation of the scaling up of this bioprocess, allowing Nutritis to access a market with high demand for natural sugars extracted from fruit.

The importance of being 100% fruit means the fructose qualifies for the ‘clean label’, a much sought-after seal of approval for all fruit-based preparations, from dairy products to jams. With its sweetening power some 50% greater than that of traditional sugars, use of fructose means manufacturers can also reduce the calorie count of their products.

The attractive business opportunity offered by this product and the robustness of the technology coupled with the production scale-up capability were significant in Nutritis’ raising EUR 13.5 million. The financing means that the Grap’Sud cooperative group now holds 52% of Nutritis. The new funding will enable Nutritis to start investment in and marketing of the industrial process on Grap’Sud sites in Rieux and Cruviers Lascours in southern France.