Biofach 2025: Vidya Europe COO details strategy for sustainable extracts with solvent-free extraction
25 Feb 2025 | Vidya Europe
At the recent Biofach organic trade show, Vidya Europe featured its organic extracts, specifically beta-carotene, green coffee, and spice extracts from its French production sites. The company’s COO, Arnaud Anandane, explained that these ingredients are produced using supercritical fluid technology to extract high-value organic ingredients. He also detailed Vidya Europe’s sustainability strategy, aiming to reduce its carbon footprint, maximize its resources through upcycling, and recycle the gas used in its solvent-free extraction.
This is Yolande Val from Nutrition Insight.
I'm here at 2025 with Arnaud Anandan, who is the chief operating officer at Europe.
Thank you for joining us today.
Nice to meet you.
I see that we've been talking and you mentioned that you're featuring organic betaca spice extract and green coffee extracts at the show today, and I'm just wondering what can you tell us about the innovation and value.
These products for the nutraceutical food and cosmetic industries.
Thanks for this opportunity, and it's a part of VDI Europe.
The family business exists more than 25 years with the continuing innovation each year, and we bring a lot of new products for the exhibition is one of our main objectives.
But this year for the BFA, we are introducing our natural organic beta-carotene.
It's one of the range of organic kerotenes we can offer.
To the organic market, it's a very specific, very niche market, and probably we are one of the first in the world to offer certified organic natural betacarotene from the algae.
Awesome.
And can you explain what the benefits of your solvent 3 extraction processes are and how they contribute to cleaner and more sustainable products?
Yeah, our technology, what we use is a supercritical extraction technology using a type of natural solvent.
Which is very eco-friendly.
It's a green energy.
Probably the main thing is the energy saving, and it helps innovation in organic, especially ingredient industry, so it makes things more possible for bringing new ingredients, for example, a beta carotene.
It needs different chemical solvents for extraction, which we cannot claim it as an organic certified product with CO2 technology, and we do have high-end equipment installed in France where we make the natural beta-carotene extract.
OK, and of course, as we know, the sustainability is a key focus for lots of companies around, and we're focusing on organic.
What can you tell us about how Vija Europe ensures its sourcing and production processes align with environmentally responsible practices?
One of our main policies as per our corporate social responsibility.
Programs which we launched a couple of years back, redefining the strategy and how the future of the group itself.
We are focusing more on the low emission of gas and reducing of carbon footprints, resource maximizing like upcycling the products, the co-products coming out of our extraction technologies, and by this way we gain the carbon.
In terms of low consumption of the exploiting resources and we share it to our customers.
This is one of our main objectives in which to give an image to the customers, not only to boost the image of the company, but as as give benefits to our end users.
They share the carbon reduction credit goes to the customers.
As a part of it, we are using one particular thing is that solvent-free is a green technology.
The supercritical extraction using carbon dioxide gas which can be recycled.
Already we are using a recycled gas which will be used for extraction and it's being recycled for the same extraction process or technology.
By this way, we are saving a lot of energy, a lot of solvents, especially, and.
And innovative new products.
OK, very interesting.
And just looking at the industry as a whole, where do you see it heading and what kind of trends do you expect will increase?
Of course the industry is getting challenging more for producers like us in terms of regulatory.
In terms of sustainability, that's an important point.
And in terms of health application and innovation, it's always the market needs, we need to innovate, otherwise to exist in the business, to give something new to the customer that attracts customers' needs, to answer the customer's needs.
So we need to answer all these questions.
That's our entire strategy Group and especially with Europe to be focused more on the future trends.
The business and speaking about those future trends, how does Vija Europe anticipate and respond to those trends in customer demands?
So we are our innovation research is based on the market trend and some futuristic approach on how the health industry is moving on.
So we do have special specialized research centers in different parts of the world for the group where we focus on different types of health applications.
A futuristic view on that.
In France we have a lipid center.
We are using supercritical technology to bring the innovative lipids, rare lipids we call which is very difficult to extract from conventional methods using a cold press, for example, to give an olive oil from the cold press method cannot bring all the high value added ingredients or actives inside the olive fruit itself by using supercritical technology, we cycle the products.
We use the spin from the extraction technology and we apply the super critical high pressure to remove all the existing remaining high value added products at a very competent terms of energy and as as less use of chemical solvents so that way we can see that we can innovate in terms of keeping the environment in the.
In the safer side, and we innovate.
Awesome, thank you so much.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for your time.
Thank you.
