Hybrid fats could shape next phase of food innovation, AAK says

AAK expects hybrid approaches combining conventional oils and fats with emerging production technologies to play an increasingly important role over the next five to 10 years, as the food industry looks for new ways to balance functionality, affordability and security of supply.

Speaking last week during a Protein Production Technology International webinar produced in partnership with AAK, Ronald van der Knaap, Global Head of Dairy, ELN & Savory at AAK, said he expects alternative technologies to augment rather than simply replace today's established oils and fats industry.

• AAK expects hybrid fat solutions to become increasingly important over the next five to 10 years
• Emerging technologies could complement established vegetable oils while strengthening functionality and supply resilience
• AAK sees its work with Savor as one example of adding non-agricultural fat production to its existing toolbox

“What I personally believe is that, in the five to 10 years ahead of us, we will see a lot of hybrid solutions,” van der Knaap said during Alternative Fats & Future Technologies: Unlocking Performance, Resilience & Scale. “And what I mean by that is that today’s oils and fats industry will be enriched with alternative technologies.”

The prediction reflects a theme that ran throughout the discussion: the future of fats may be less about choosing between conventional and novel sources and more about combining technologies according to the functionality, nutritional profile, economics and supply requirements of individual applications.

That thinking is already informing AAK’s collaboration with Savor, the California-headquartered company developing fats from carbon rather than agricultural crops or animals. Kim Olofsson, Global Head of Research & Development at AAK, said the company deliberately takes a technology-agnostic approach when evaluating how fats and oils should be produced. “From the R&D side, we don’t really care which technology we use, as long as we have one that works for the needs that we have,” he said.

Olofsson added that AAK prefers to think in terms of 'and' rather than 'or' when selecting technologies, potentially combining more than one approach to produce ingredients with specific properties. That could mean, for example, combining saturated fatty acids produced through Savor’s technology with unsaturated fatty acids from vegetable oils. “There is a lot of potential – long chains, medium chains, short chains and so on – combining those with unsaturated fatty acids from vegetable oils, for example,” Olofsson said.

“And we have a lot of technologies in the toolbox as well in order to create those different kinds of products or ingredients that we need to supply products with a certain functionality, a certain nutritional profile, or whatever we want.”

For AAK, one of the attractions of Savor’s approach is that it introduces another potential route to saturated fats without relying directly on agriculture. Olofsson divided current and emerging fat production broadly into three routes: growing vegetable oils, using biological processes such as precision fermentation, or employing technologies such as Savor’s carbon-based process.

“From our point of view, the last one is, of course, new and very exciting because the other two are based on agriculture,” he said. “So you need land, fertilizers, fresh water and so on. But the third one is not.”

He stressed, however, that technologies such as Savor’s are not expected to displace the enormous existing vegetable oils and fats industry. “With that said, it will of course not replace vegetable oils and fats, because we produce globally more than 200 million tons or something like that,” Olofsson said. “But we can use new technologies in order to alleviate and balance the supply chains.”

That diversification has become increasingly important as food manufacturers contend with climate-related disruption, trade disputes, geopolitical instability and agricultural risks.

Olofsson said the industry's thinking around security of supply has changed substantially as those pressures have become more visible.

“If we can mix and match a little bit and create that diversity in the supply chains, they will become much more resilient and less unstable,” he said.

For Savor, the opportunity extends beyond developing fats with particular technical properties.

Chiara Cecchini, Senior Vice President, Commercialization at Savor, said producing fats from abundant carbon resources could ultimately allow production to be located much closer to the markets consuming them. “The vision here is building a complementary supply chain that lives domestically here, not on the other side of the world,” Cecchini said.

The company sees that supply as complementary to existing tropical oils rather than a wholesale replacement. As production volumes increase and costs decline, Cecchini believes the immediate question will be which food and ingredient companies move early enough to secure access. “As those volumes are ramping up and as those price points are going down, who are the first players coming to the table who are actually able to grab that domestic supply?” she said. “Because, for a bit of time, there will not be enough for everybody.”

AAK is already exploring where those combinations could work commercially, with dairy alternatives and bakery among the initial areas being investigated.

Olofsson said those categories provide a logical starting point because they require the kinds of saturated fats Savor can produce, while Savor has already demonstrated applications in both areas.

For all the potential of emerging technologies, van der Knaap cautioned that their ability to reach meaningful scale will ultimately depend on economics.

“We can create a lot of forward-looking solutions, but what about affordability?” he said.

He expects the coming decade to act as a filtering period in which some technologies establish themselves while others fail to progress.

“Step by step, certain technologies will survive, others won’t,” van der Knaap said. “But the technologies that do survive will reach a certain scale that will bring affordability into a range that is really within consumer acceptance.”

Rather than signalling the end of conventional fats and oils, the emerging landscape could therefore give manufacturers a considerably larger toolbox – combining established supply chains with new production routes where they provide additional functionality, resilience or sustainability benefits.

The discussion formed part of PPTI’s webinar, Alternative Fats and Future Technologies: Unlocking Performance, Resilience, and Scale, produced in partnership with AAK. If you missed the live broadcast, sign up to watch the complete session on demand by clicking here

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