Vancouver, British Columbia, -based EnWave Corporation said the R&D agreement with Nestle subsidiary Nestec grants the Swiss food firm access to its nutraREV process.
The technology, which is said to compete with standard freeze drying at one sixth of the cost, could be used for drying products such as fruit, vegetables and herbs. However, the firm has also placed significant focus on its potential in the development of nutraceutical ingredients, such as cranberry or blueberry powders, as well as live cultures or probiotics.
EnWave said the terms of the agreement with Nestle remain confidential, but added that it sees “many opportunities within Nestle beyond the products in the initial testing division”.
VP of corporate development Jennifer Thompson said that the R&D will focus on one of Nestle’s broad divisions to determine if the technology can be used to improve existing products as well as create new ones.
“In their evaluation of the technology they will be looking at a range of potential improvements, including nutrition, flavour, texture and color,” she told NutraIngredients-USA.com.
The agreement is for a limited “but reasonable” R&D period, and EnWave hopes it will lead to a licensing agreement.
In an existing agreement with Danish ingredient firm Danisco, EnWave is already testing the applicability of a parallel technology – powderREV – to the production of probiotics.
Radiant Energy Vacuum
The firm’s Radiant Energy Vacuum (REV) process uses vacuum microwave technology as a dehydration method.
It combines microwave energy transfer with pressure control to dehydrate and alter structures and drive chemical reactions. According to EnWave, this can create unique product characteristics for both food products and medical applications. It is also said to reduce the potential for large batch losses with continuous processing, as well as improve the retention of flavour and colour, and facilitate attributes such as puffing.
The nutraREV technology can be used in combination with grinding to produce cranberry and blueberry powders for use as nutraceutical ingredients. Last year, EnWave licensed the technology to Cal-San, one of the largest blueberry producers in British Colombia.
The dehydration method is said to be cheaper (partly because it uses less energy) and faster than freeze drying (40 minutes for drying berries, compared to 48 hours in freeze drying).
PowderREV is designed to produce powder from liquids. The objective of the agreement between EnWave and Danisco is to create a dehydration method that delivers high-speed continuous bulk powder processing that can handle sensitive biological materials, such as cultures.
“We believe that we will be able to dry anything that has 20-25 percent solids (ie milk texture) using the prototype powderREV machine, but we would need to test every material individually to determine viability if we are using material which contains live or active ingredients,” Thompson told NutraIngredients-USA.com last year.