“Unmissable opportunity” in personalized microencapsulated ingredients, flags Blendhub CEO

18 Jan 2022 --- Blendhub and Nucaps have teamed up to develop personalized functional ingredients for the nutrition and health industries.

Blendhub operates a multi-localized network of powder-based food production hubs, while Nucaps is a nanotechnology development platform that can encapsulate bioactives and probiotics for nanocapsules and biocapsules.

The companies say that this alliance will allow them to share their technological developments, infrastructure and knowledge to capture growth in the health and nutrition industries. 

“Platform collaboration like this aims at generating business and shared value for both companies, their customers and partners and most importantly for final consumers and planet,” Henrik Kristensen, founder and chief moonshot officer at Blendhub, tells NutritionInsight.

The eventual costs of this collaboration will be shared between the companies and partners according to the workers employed in each project and commercial opportunity.Blendhub’s portable powder blending unit in Colombia.

Microencapsulation targets multiple health demands
According to Nucaps, its natural protein capsules improve the preservation of active ingredients like antioxidants, probiotics, flavors, essential oils, vitamins and anticarcinogens, providing greater efficacy and stability. 

In addition, the technological capacity of Nucaps enables the personalization of food products. There is also the possibility of adaption to an infinite number of substances, applications and final recipes. 

The microencapsulated powdered ingredients can be introduced into all types of food matrices and provide additional nutrients to improve health, for example, to strengthen the immune system, prevent obesity, regulate metabolism or delay aging.

Mariano Oto, CEO at Nucaps, notes that there were various R&D challenges when creating Nucaps.

“These included the industrial scale-up of the technology using conventional facilities and the thermal resistance of the particles required for food processing.”  

Other factors included the stability in different final matrices (powder, dairy, beverages, bakery, etc.) and the gastrointestinal resistance of the protein capsules as natural carriers of healthy compounds and probiotics.Nucaps is a nanotechnology development platform created in Spain.

Blendhub eyes strategic alliances
Meanwhile, Blendhub provides Nucaps and its customers with its food-as-a-service platform to help any food company design, produce and launch innovative food products anywhere in the world. 

In addition, Blendhub offers infrastructure-as-a-service to produce locally, closer to raw materials and final consumers. This is through a network of portable factories, now on four continents.

Finally, it will facilitate the validation of new ingredients and formulations through Chemometric Brain’s software-as-a-service.

“This agreement fits into Blendhub’s global strategy of building strategic alliances with industry stakeholders who are willing to foster a more sustainable, efficient and consumer-oriented food production based on shared value creation instead of a traditional ‘winner takes all’ approach,” says Kristensen.

As for Nucaps, the partnership will allow it to increase the production capacity, says Oto. 

“We will be able to give a better, faster and healthier service for clients throughout the world thanks to Blendhub’s network of food production hubs and their access to local SME food producers which until date could not be reached through our actual commercial network,” he explains. 

Personalized nutrition’s growth potential
Kristensen believes personalized nutrition is in its infancy and has “great growth potential.” 

“That’s why Blendhub is focusing on creating alliances with a global network of affiliate partners, other food industry stakeholders and platforms which, like us, are developing pioneering technology solutions to escape the pull from the past and offer personalized, healthier and more affordable food products in sustainable global supply chains.”

Late last year, Blendhub also partnered with Qina, a nutrition industry consultancy, to target companies interested in creating “opportunities and projects that translate science into innovative solutions.” 

Kristensen elaborates that personalized nutrition – together with transparency – is “without any doubt” the most important trend in the global food industry.

“With more than 2 billion consumers not having access to sufficient safe and nutritious food, it is obvious that the concerns about health, well-being and even longevity are growing exponentially.” 

“At the same time, the food industry is increasingly supported by connected technologies, data sets and science, giving a unique opportunity to develop tailored products that are good for individual consumers and for the planet. This is an opportunity that we cannot miss,” Kristensen concludes. 

By Katherine Durrell