The colour industry is undergoing a radical change. Unhealthy, synthetic colours are now being replaced by natural plant-based colours. Whilst this change is considered healthier than the existing synthetic colours, it creates several problems for the colour industry as plant-based colours are poor in quality, they are highly impure and they compete directly with agricultural land use and food. To overcome these limitations, N-CHROMA innovates by developing revolutionary bio-technologies to produce colours suitable for the Food and Beverage and Colour Cosmetic industries.
N-CHROMA is using the common baker’s yeast as a factory to produce natural colour compounds called anthocyanins. This class of colour compounds is interesting for the Food and Beverage and Colour Cosmetic industries as it has a dual function: Wide colour portfolio from blue to purple, red and orange and; Very strong antioxidant activity. The dual function and the existing anthocyanin market (€654 Mn by 2026) make anthocyanins a perfect target molecule for N-CHROMA.
Current production of anthocyanins is relied purely on their extraction from plant tissue. The extraction process is extremely inefficient and uses harmful chemicals. In fact, less than 1% of the plant raw material is converted into colour, with the rest being pure waste. Moreover, anthocyanins extracted from plant-tissues are very unstable, something that can affect the shelf life of coloured products and therefore contribute more to a wasteful, unsustainable industry. Through thorough market analysis, N-CHROMA defined a clear gap in the market and the need to create a revolutionary solution for the production of sustainable, healthy and high quality anthocyanin compounds.
Throughout the SME Instrument phase 1 grant, N-CHROMA focused on developing further its technology but also on assessing the legislation for introducing its anthocyanin products in the Food and Beverage and Colour Cosmetic industries.
