Pig hair and hooves are made of keratin (fibrous protein), a common by-product of the meat industry, obtained in large volumes in industrial slaughterhouses. Approximately 1.5 billion pigs were processed worldwide for their meat in 2018. Taking into account a typical pig hair and hoof content of around 0.5 kg/animal, 750 kt of waste are generated worldwide annually and represent a global problem. So far, there are only two options for disposing of solid waste such as pig hair: either it is incinerated or it is taken to landfill. Burning it produces air pollution and landfilling it is an even bigger problem because the amount of hair that is discarded is counted by tons after one year, thus increasing the volume of untreatable waste. On the other hand, the current legislation obliges to reduce the amount of organic matter that ends up in conventional landfills.
On the other hand, keratin has been used for a decade in cosmetics as an additive to skin and hair care products, but due to current extraction technology that uses very aggressive methods, the protein is denatured resulting in non-functional keratin and therefore without the expected bioavailability.
At Royal Triumph we have identified the business opportunity behind such problems and have managed to develop the solution by means of a pilot keratin processing plant KERASOL with a high degree of innovation that makes a by-product, considered a waste, be used as a raw material that can be transformed into an additive for cosmetic products desirable by consumers. KERASOL is a safe, cost-effective and environmentally-friendly system for the collection, processing and transformation of pig hair and nails into bioactive soluble keratin hydrolysate with high added value for use in the cosmetics industry and as an additive in laundry detergents. This will have a great impact on the world keratin market, valued at 10,740 t in 2018, which is estimated to increase by more than 45% in the next 10 years.
