Game-changing emulsifier can slash beverage process costs, claims Ingredion

By Elaine WATSON

- Last updated on GMT

Many soft drinks contain oil-based flavors and colors. As oil and water do not mix, emulsions are used to deliver oils to enable uniform and stable beverages.
Many soft drinks contain oil-based flavors and colors. As oil and water do not mix, emulsions are used to deliver oils to enable uniform and stable beverages.
A new starch emulsifier developed by Ingredion can deliver four times the emulsifying power of traditional beverage emulsifiers, enabling manufacturers to slash production and distribution costs, claims the ingredients giant.

Purity Gum Ultra, which was launched in Europe last December and made its North American debut at the IFT show in June, enables beverage makers to maximize oil load and minimize water usage in emulsion concentrates, delivering significant savings, says Ingredion.

A spokeswoman would not provide sales figures but told FoodNavigator-USA that Purity Gum Ultra had already proved a big hit with customers looking for more effective alternatives to conventional starches or gum Arabic.

She added: “The product has been called a technological success by the industry due by its ability to deliver a four times starch to oil ratio, something unheard of with traditional starch emulsifiers.

“According to our US flavor and fragrance customers, this is truly game-changing technology.”

Why will a more powerful emulsifier save money?

Many soft drinks contain oil-based flavors and colors. As oil and water do not mix, emulsions are used to deliver oils to enable uniform and stable beverages.

An emulsion is a uniform dispersion of oil droplets in a water-based medium, stabilized by emulsifiers (typically gums or starches that have an affinity to oil and​ water).

Emulsifiers reduce interfacial tension to facilitate emulsification and stabilize emulsions during storage, transport, and throughout a product’s shelf-life.

Concentrated emulsions are typically produced in bulk and then shipped to bottlers, where they are added to beverage syrups that are then added to the final beverages.

The better the emulsifier is at maximizing the oil load and minimizing water usage in emulsion concentrates, the more savings firms can make.

Emulsifier doubles the manufacturing volume that can be produced from the same amount of raw materials

In a new white paper ​explaining how Purity Gum Ultra works, Ingredion says it can double the oil load over conventional emulsifiers, which in turn doubles the manufacturing volume that can be produced from the same amount of raw materials, slashing processing costs.

It also reduces water by up to 54% in emulsion concentrate, enabling manufacturers to cut shipping and inventory costs and reduce their carbon footprint, says Ingredion.

For example, firms switching to Purity Gum Ultra from gum Arabic could save an estimated $1m per 1,000 metric tons of finished beverage, claims Ingredion.

“A main limitation of traditional emulsifiers in stabilizing higher oil loads is that higher oil loads require a higher amount of emulsifiers, which causes too high of a viscosity in processing . As a result, typical oil loads for beverage emulsions are less than 15% to avoid processing issues.

“Another limitation is that emulsions are thermodynamically unstable, increasing oil load and reducing the emulsifier level to make emulsions much more difficult to stabilize.

To download a copy of the white paper, click here​.

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