31 Aug 2022
The aim of the partnership is to discover new, nature-identical ingredients with innovative functionalities that are good for people and the planet.
Puratos, the industry leader in innovative food ingredients and services for the bakery, patisserie and chocolate sectors announced today a new partnership with Shiru, a functional ingredient company for the food industry. Puratos’s purpose is to move the planet forward by creating innovative food solutions for the health & well-being of people everywhere. The goal of the collaboration with Shiru is to find new functional, plant-based ingredients that can bring innovation to bakery, patisserie and chocolate products, while improving sustainability and nutritional values without sacrificing taste. The partnership complements the existing product innovation strategy of Puratos that focuses on bringing disruptive solutions that improve consumers’ health & well-being that underlines the company’s deep-rooted commitment to future generations.
Shiru’s discovery platform Flourish™ uses bioinformatics and machine learning to search through hundreds of millions of naturally-occurring proteins to identify promising candidates that match a specific desired food function—in this case, for use as ingredient(s) in baked goods. Using precision fermentation and high-throughput screening techniques, Shiru then produces these proteins in their lab and evaluates their performance as ingredients. The end result is an ingredient that can be produced sustainably at scale by Puratos to bring brand-new functionalities or to replace an animal-based product, without sacrificing taste or nutrition.
“Puratos already offers a full range of plant-based solutions that enable the removal of dairy, eggs and butter with taste, texture and functionality as close as possible to the traditional counterpart. What is most important is that we have unequivocal evidence showing that these plant-based alternatives are significantly better for the planet. Life-cycle assessment of the environmental footprint of these products concludes that the impact of our plant-based egg-wash alternative, Sunset Glaze, on the planet is 59% lower than pasteurized eggs, while the impact of our plant-based butter alternative, Mimetic, is three times lower than dairy butter. Together with Shiru, we will be able to accelerate our plant-based product innovation pipeline for the benefit of our customers and consumers”, said Paul Baisier, Chief R&D Officer at Puratos.
“With the large market opportunity the baking industry presents us, partnering with Puratos was a natural fit in developing our functional protein ingredients,” said Jasmin Hume, Shiru CEO and founder. “Puratos is a global leader in the industry, and by working together, we have the chance to make a major impact towards a more sustainable food system.”
With Puratos, Shiru will scale production and testing for the target functional proteins, accelerating the timeline for making these ingredients available in baked goods for consumers. Puratos has a strong history of innovation in the food space, a track record of partnerships with universities and start-ups, and of using technology to enable breakthroughs. In addition to the ingredient development aspect of the partnership, Shiru is also exhibiting in Puratos’s PuraDome, a cutting-edge FoodTech Center where the harsh conditions of planet Mars are used as extraordinary inspiration to stimulate food innovation.
“At Puratos, we truly believe that collaborations can fuel innovation within the food ecosystem,” stated Paul Baisier, Chief R&D Officer at Puratos. “As a company rooted in biology and science, Shiru is the perfect partner in the Puratos’s journey to finding novel uses for proteins discovered by Shiru’s FlourishTM platform as functional food ingredients that are sustainable, healthy and delicious.”
