Amersham brewing up change
the pharmaceutical industry, is hoping to find new markets for a
number of its products in the food and beverage industry. First on
its list is the brewing sector, where it believes its high quality
separation techniques - used for medicinal compounds - have a
bright future in purifying beer, writes Danny Vincent.
Amersham's technique, which is called CSS, is able to separate complex proteins from beer more efficiently than conventional separation and filtration methods. This, the company claims, could generate considerable savings for companies currently using more traditional techniques.
The Amersham system can be used 500 times before the filters have to be changed, and can last for 10 years without having to be replaced, the company said. Most filters in current use by breweries need to be replaced after every cycle.
But Amersham's claims are not idle ones - the company has already sold its technology to one Russian brewer and is seeing considerable interest from other companies as a result.
"Brewers need to be able to make beer with a guaranteed quality level, but with the industry becoming increasingly global, that quality needs to be maintained for longer periods of time - between six months to a year sometimes - as beer is becoming more widely distributed," Amersham's project marketing director, Rune Andersson told BeverageDaily.comHe said that Amersham's technology helped in this regard by more effectively filtering out the complex proteins in beer which over longer periods of time can cause the product to lose its taste and become hazy.
The technique was originally used to separate biomolecules from DNA, Andersson added.
But despite the apparent advantages of the new technology, persuading potential customers of the benefits is not always easy. "The beverage industry is very traditional and the technology used can sometimes be dated. Brewers are conservative by nature and not always receptive to change,"he added.
Andersson said that it had taken Amersham three years to become established in the food and beverage sector, but stressed that he was confident that there would now be a rapid take up of its technology, which promised to become something of an industry standard.
The biotech company has struck an agreement with Russian brewing group Taranow, based in Kaliningrad, which will use the separation technology to improve the quality of all 700,000 litres of beer it produces each day.
"Brewers are producing billions of hectolitres each year and so it is very important that their production techniques are as efficient as possible. Just a slight improvement in efficiency, such as that produced by our technology, can help companies save huge amounts of money," Andersson said.
He explained that the decision to target the Russian brewing sector had been based on a number of factors. The Russian brewing industry is expanding at an estimated 25 per cent a year, and brewers there are increasingly "willing to look for economical ways of improving production, including investment in new technology".
Andersson said that the Russian deal had given Amersham a foot in the door, and that it had served as a "reference place" for other brewers to assess the impact of the separation technology.
The success of this strategy is already clear. The bioscience company is currently in talks with a number of brewers interested in the technology, and although Andersson declined to give any names he hinted that they included a number of players in the global top 10 - firms which account for over 50 per cent of the world's beer production.
Filtration is clearly an area of particular interest for brewers - even those major players which Andersson suggested were sometimes slow to adapt to new technologies. Birgitte Jensen of leading Danish brewing company Carlsberg told BeverageDaily.com that the group "was always looking for ways to optimise its filtration processes and reduce costs as much as possible" - suggesting that interest in Amersham's product may well be high.
And the long-term benefits for Amersham of moving into this area are clear. "We are focusing on the food and beverage sectors because they constitute a huge market. Even though we are newcomers in this sector, we have a product which is already highly competitive, and there are other technologies we have developed with similarly innovative uses in the food and beverage sector," he concluded.
