Valorizing side streams: Symrise utilizes chicken and banana by-products to enhance circular economy

21 Jun 2023 --- With continuous pressures on supply chains and the need to feed the world’s growing population, Symrise aims to pioneer side stream upcycling, providing markets with access to greater quantities of ingredients while preserving precious resources. The company’s goal is “doing more with less,” as it looks to achieve circularity with ingredients such as chicken and banana peel to extract the full value of its natural raw materials.

Speaking to Food Ingredients First, Antoine Coursault, director of global product line chicken and meat, BU Naturals, Food & Beverage Division at Symrise, explains how it utilizes chicken by-products.

“At our site in France and our North American facilities, we source chicken parts from local food production. Only 53% of the chicken gets used as such in food like fillets, wings and drumsticks. We valorize the other half of the chicken, sourcing a variety of side streams, from bones to skin or carcasses. We process them as valuable ingredients, using only gentle, kitchen-like processes, such as various cooking technologies, extraction, hydrolysis and drying.”

The results are aromatic broths, powders, purified fats and pet food palatability enhancers that enrich thousands of food, flavor and pet food applications, delivering the desired mouthfeel or even the taste of meat and umami.

About one-third of global agricultural production gets lost or wasted in the food industry.“This way,” Coursault explains, “we preserve the beneficial properties of the raw materials and deliver clean label solutions while making the maximum use of raw materials.”

Lowering its carbon footprint
While the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development expects “growth in global consumption of meat proteins over the next decade to increase by 14% by 2030 compared to the base period average of 2018-2020,” leveraging upcycled chicken ingredients can help to lower carbon footprints. 

First, chicken comes with the lowest carbon footprint of any type of meat, Coursault notes. 

“Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from chicken, for example, are five times lower than beef. Also, chicken side streams come with a lower carbon footprint than primary streams.”

Internal studies conducted to assess poultry carcasses’ emissions have demonstrated real and significant savings in terms of GHG emissions compared with fresh chicken meat. Thus, he explains that we see real potential to reduce the carbon footprint of food by upcycling chicken side streams into valuable ingredients. 

A circular business model
For a long time, circularity has formed one of the main elements of Symrise’s business model. 

Coursault says the company implements the principles of circular economy in its entire raw material and product portfolio by entirely using raw materials wherever possible, avoiding waste of by-products or reintroducing materials in production processes, and revaluing them to create new value-adding products. 

“The circular economy will play a decisive role in helping us reach our climate and environmental targets,” he underscores. 

Waste not, want not
Coursault further states that “we are living beyond our means.”

“Humanity consumes too many raw materials, creates too much waste for the planet, and on top of it, makes poor use of its resources.”

Production and consumption too often follow the same pattern, he flags.The food ingredient and pet food industries play an essential role in upcycling the co-products of food production, says Symrise.

“We extract hundreds of different raw materials, make them into more or less long-lasting consumer products, and dispose of them after use. Up to now, we could recycle and reuse only a portion of them.”

This linear chain also applies to consumer goods that the industries manufacture in which Symrise operates. 

Coursault says: “We can see this in the food industry, for example, which currently loses or wastes one-third of global agricultural production along the food chain and uses many natural raw materials with too little consistency.”

“The time has come to make changes since global business activities bring significant consequences for people and nature,” he warns, adding how the mining and processing of raw materials account for 50% of global GHG emissions and 90% of biodiversity loss. 

“If we continue along this path, this level of material consumption could double by 2060. This would result in devastating consequences for the natural environment and the global ecosystem, which can neither fulfill this demand for raw materials over the long term nor cushion the environmental impact associated with disposal.”

To help stop this development, a circular economy is one of the many measures Symrise uses to reduce its carbon emissions, minimize consumption across all levels and optimize its processes. 

“We apply its principles to our full raw materials and products portfolio. We want to focus on cycles as much as possible – by using 100% of raw materials, avoiding waste, and returning side streams to processes.”

Exploring regenerative agriculture
Symrise is also focusing its efforts on reducing its carbon footprint. The company aims to achieve net zero throughout the supply chain (scopes 1, 2 and 3) by 2045 and to become climate-neutral regarding procurement and energy consumption (scopes 1 and 2) from 2030 onwards.

“We already reached our target of sourcing 100% of electricity from renewable sources,” notes Coursault. 

“We have committed to promoting regenerative agriculture in our strategic value chains, thereby helping to capture CO2 from the atmosphere. In line with the circularity approach, regenerative agriculture aims to protect and restore natural resources: primarily soil, water and biodiversity.”

Banana side streams
Symrise is currently exploring several concepts that involve banana side streams.Meanwhile, Symrise has set up its own incubator for innovation within its Taste, Nutrition & Health segment. It entails a specific platform dedicated to exploring the upcycling of side streams. 

According to Santiago Yanez, global product manager for Banana within BU Naturals, part of the Food & Beverage Division at Symrise, this allows Symrise to experiment with scaling up operations at a faster pace and to research technologies and approaches further. 

“We are reducing our environmental footprint, using resources efficiently, minimizing waste, and generating new income models for us and our partners.”

One of the significant growth opportunities, and already a success story, says Yanez, relates to the valorization of banana side streams from Ecuador, most importantly banana peel. 

“We are currently exploring several concepts that involve banana side streams. Upcycling food side streams into added-value products is playing right into the sustainability pillar at Symrise. We aim to accelerate our present and lay the groundwork for the future,” he details. 

Moreover, Yanez explains that Symrise’s business activities “ultimately depend on the responsible use and conservation of natural resources as well as the diversity of nature.”

By Elizabeth Green