{"id":1800,"date":"2023-11-22T09:56:43","date_gmt":"2023-11-22T14:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.ncsu.edu\/win\/?p=1800"},"modified":"2023-11-22T09:56:44","modified_gmt":"2023-11-22T14:56:44","slug":"this-nc-food-tech-company-is-about-more-than-crops-its-addressing-waste-hunger-as-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.ncsu.edu\/win\/this-nc-food-tech-company-is-about-more-than-crops-its-addressing-waste-hunger-as-well\/","title":{"rendered":"This NC food tech company is about more than crops – it’s addressing waste, hunger as well"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Research Triangle Park – You could call\u00a0SinnovaTek<\/a>\u00a0a Raleigh-based food technology company. But that would miss some significant nuances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SinnovaTek is a privately held certified\u00a0B corporation<\/a> that is tapping its origins in North Carolina State University research, and North Carolina’s unique agricultural diversity, to upend food processing technology and, also, to address local and global agricultural waste and hunger issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

B Corp certification is a designation that a business is meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability, and transparency on factors from employee benefits and sustainability metrics to supply chain practices and corporate governance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SinnovaTek is primarily an equipment purveyor, but it has also spun out successful contract development and production businesses serving some of the nation\u2019s largest consumer corporations, while still making it possible for small entrepreneurial North Carolina food startups to affordably test their ideas. The company\u2019s\u00a0FirstWave Innovations<\/a>\u00a0manufacturing subsidiary opened a small-scale facility in Raleigh in 2020, an 8,300-square-foot site for pilot manufacturing and for helping companies and entrepreneurs launch and test new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In September FirstWave Innovations began full-scale contract processing and packaging at a new $20 million, 62,500-square-foot plant in Nash County\u2019s\u00a0Middlesex Corporate Centre<\/a>, about 35 miles east of Raleigh. The company says the newly upfitted industrial shell building is now one of the most advanced food-processing factories in the world. The company expects to double its staff, with some 25 new employees by the end of this year and as many as 75 employees there by the end of 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SinnovaTek also markets the highly specialized food processing equipment it develops and uses, which primarily incorporates a technology called continuous-flow microwave thermal processing. It\u2019s a platform that enables long shelf life and flavor and quality preservation of fruit- and vegetable-based fluid food products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Think of it as a flow-through truck-sized microwave oven that only zaps juicy vegetation that is being forced through tubes at precise temperatures, pressures and velocities. The process kills unwanted microbes in the slurry, but it happens quickly enough to preserve color, nutrients and other desirable properties of the plant-based fluids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scaling Production Capabilities for Companies Big and Small<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building on the commercial success of SinnovaTek\u2019s previous smaller-scale installations, FirstWave\u2019s Middlesex site is scaling production of much larger commercial quantities of unique, nutritionally superior, shelf-stable, aseptically packaged (in a sterile environment) foods and beverages, including baby and toddler foods supplemented with \u201csensitive,\u201d health-promoting ingredients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Josip Simunovic, Ph.D., a research professor at NC State\u2019s Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences, says the company achieves this level of product quality, stability and sensitive nutrient retention through a number of patented advanced processing technologies invented and developed over several decades by teams of faculty and student researchers at NC State.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simunovic, a native of the Eastern European country Croatia, has become a true North Carolina transplant since earning his doctorate at NC State in 1998. He was mentored by Kenneth Swartzel, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor Emeritus who is another aseptic processing pioneer and inventor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simunovic has since led numerous teams of faculty and student researchers at the Raleigh university. Licensing and commercializing the resulting technologies from NC State, he helped start more than 10 companies. He co-founded SinnovaTek in 2015 with President and CEO Michael Druga and Chief Innovation Officer Amanda Vargochik, who earned her master\u2019s in food science at NC State. Simunovic serves as the company\u2019s chief science officer. Another subsidiary, SinnoVita, provides R&D services to perfect ingredients in a wide range of plant-based foods. Simunovic says one the founders\u2019 shared goals is to open consumers\u2019 minds to the reality that processed foods, when processed correctly, can be tasty and nutritious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Importantly, the company\u2019s unique patent portfolio also includes novel systems for temperature and flow measurements and safety validation of both homogeneous and complex particulate foods. These have led to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration\u2019s clearance and the company\u2019s market introduction of more than 200 new food and beverage products under a variety of brands, including those of some of the largest global consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies as well as small local, innovative startups. \u201cRight now we have about half a dozen brand owners with a dozen products lined up to start production at our new Middlesex facility,\u201d said Simunovic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDr. Simunovic is a true genius and innovator who has contributed immensely to North Carolina\u2019s agricultural infrastructure,\u201d said Nandini Mendu, Ph.D., senior director of evaluation with the North Carolina Biotechnology Center\u2019s focused initiative team. \u201cWe are delighted to have this FirstWave opening to expand our ag tech and food tech visibility worldwide.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview with NCBiotech, Simunovic said the first industrial application of the technology spinning out of his lab came several years before he and his colleagues established SinnovaTek. It was actually with\u00a0Yamco<\/a>, a Snow Hill-based association of North Carolina sweet potato growers and farmers. \u201cNorth Carolina has long been the nation\u2019s largest producer of sweet potatoes,\u201d he said, \u201cin large part because NC State had a fantastic multigenerational team developing varieties that helped our farmers maintain the lead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting It Right Around the Holiday Table<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One related item in which North Carolina has played a leadership role: those involved in the industry have stumped for a universal change in the spelling of \u201csweet potato\u201d for more than 30 years, to make it one word. In 2019, the North Carolina Sweet Potato Commission lobbied the general assembly to officially change the spelling of the state vegetable to \u201csweet potato.\u201d The measure passed and was signed into law by the governor. Advocates note that sweet potato is a noun and not an adjective. They say \u201csweet\u201d is not a descriptor, but part of the actual nomenclature for the vegetable technically known as Ipomoea batatas. This is different than a potato which uses adjectives like white, red or russet to describe Solanum tuberosum, an entirely different vegetable. And by the way, yams (Dioscorea sp.) are not even grown in the U.S. commercially. If you haven\u2019t spent time in Africa, the Caribbean, South America or other areas where yams are cultivated, you\u2019ve probably never even tasted one of the starchy tubers that are true yams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever the vegetable, one of the major problems in agriculture is crop waste, notes Simunovic. For example, sweetpotatoes were previously generally grown in North Carolina only to be marketed as baking potatoes, with a small number also used in canning operations. That meant North Carolina farmers left about 40% of their crop on the ground to rot, also distributing some in bulk containers to food banks, because those sweetpotatoes didn\u2019t satisfy the size and shape requirements of the ideal baking potato that make it to grocery stores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, along came the Simunovic technology, which later also got a major boost with a grant from NC State\u2019s Chancellor\u2019s Innovation Fund in 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019d spent more than a decade at NC State working to develop a prototype system for effective food preservation,\u201d recalled Simunovic. \u201cThen one day we had a visit from\u00a0Ron Fish<\/a>, the assistant director of agribusiness with the NC Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. He arranged a meeting with us and a team of sweet potato growers.\u201d At that time, says Simunovic, North Carolina led the nation in sweet potato production by a margin of 34%.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSoon we were able to produce a sweet potato pur\u00e9e with our process, so the size and shape of a sweet potato no longer mattered,\u201d he said. The growers could scoop up all their crop, send the baking potatoes to that market, and process the former waste items into this pur\u00e9e that eventually ended up in hundreds of new, nutritionally enriched products. Some of the leftovers even became Covington<\/a>, the first sweet potato vodka in the market, named after the patented sweet potato variety developed by the NC State scientist Henry M. Covington.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sweet potato canning operations previously had to use an outdated, severe thermal process for a pur\u00e9e to be shelf stable, and it would lose 70% of thermosensitive nutrients like beta-carotene,\u201d said Simunovic. \u201cOur microwave aseptic process allows it to save 97% to 98% of beta-carotene, also known as pro-vitamin A.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rest, as they say, was history. Food companies now use sweet potato pur\u00e9es in a lot of important products, Simunovic noted. In fact, each year SinnovaTek microwave technologies help turn millions of pounds of sweet potatoes, carrots, mangoes, berries, apples, grapes and other foods once destined to rot into products such as pur\u00e9es or soups, smoothies and sauces. Food processed by FirstWave has a shelf life of a year to 18 months without refrigeration, Simunovic explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe like to say that before we started that process, North Carolina was #1 in sweet potato production by 34%, but still leaving 40% of the crop on the ground,\u201d he said. \u201cNow, 15 years later, North Carolina is still first \u2013 but now by 60% \u2013 even though sweet potato production in the U.S. has doubled! We like to believe our process was part of that growth for North Carolina.\u201d<\/p>\n

Farmers around the world struggle with losses from food waste, Simunovic said, especially in Africa, where it often claims 70% to 80% of crops, partly due to small and inefficient distribution systems, lack of reliable electric grids and other struggles. As a result, SinnovaTek helped establish a food processing facility in Kenya in 2020, and it\u2019s developing another in South Africa.<\/p>\n

More New Opportunities Are Unfolding<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

\u201cOur products are still all homogeneous fluids, but beyond what we\u2019re marketing now is the ability to make beverages and foods containing particulates,\u201d said Simunovic. \u201cWe hope to be able to introduce things like bubble teas, and particle-loaded soups like minestrone and stews like goulash. These are still very much under development.\u201d<\/p>

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n\n

Simunovic is like a kid in a candy store when he talks about the historic spool-up and now the successes and future possibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere were ups and downs and numerous explosions, but the technology is just magical,\u201d he muses. \u201cThe ability to prevent both microbial spoilage and growth of pathogenic microorganisms depends on the temperature level achieved during sterilization. The higher the temp, the more efficient the inactivation is. For every 10 degrees Celsius you go beyond the 121-degree Celsius sterilization used in conventional canning, the effective rate of inactivation of pathogenic spores increases 10 times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe process, therefore, is timewise divided by 10 at that higher temperature. Therefore, our ability to preserve nutrients and flavors and colors and vitamins gets better as we go up in sterilization temperature. That is the theory behind the science of our technologies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Microwave technology turned out to do the trick. \u201cThe pathway the food must go through in microwave is much shorter in time, sometimes 100 times shorter than in canning. The resulting products are safe, shelf stable and have superior sensory and nutritional quality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He says he\u2019s especially enthusiastic about baby foods because they fit well into the FirstWave sweet spot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur biggest focus now is baby and toddler foods in aseptic pouches,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t do our own brands. We co-pack for others. And the major advantage for the companies working with us is that the flavors, nutrients and their added supplements are preserved.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both SinnovaTek and FirstWave have been recognized with many industry, professional and government awards for innovation, product quality, sustainability and service. Simunovic was also recently recognized with a\u00a0Lifetime Achievement Award<\/a>\u00a0by the International Association for Engineering and Foods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(C) N.C. Biotech Center<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Wolfpack Investor Network (\u201cWIN\u201d) is North Carolina State University\u2019s angel investor group that provides capital and guidance to NC State connected, early-stage companies. WIN has just announced the completion of a follow-on round of financing for Natrx Inc., a Raleigh based company that uses a proprietary, advanced technology and manufacturing approach to deliver high-performance, nature-based solutions that protect coastal ecosystems and infrastructure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1119,"featured_media":1801,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ncst_custom_author":"","ncst_show_custom_author":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","ncst_content_audit_display":false,"ncst_backToTopFlag":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[198,197,195,199,59,194,47],"class_list":["post-1800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-b-corporation","tag-firstwave-innovations","tag-food-tech-company","tag-nc-biotech-center","tag-north-carolina-startups","tag-sinnovatek","tag-wolfpack-investor-network"],"displayCategory":null,"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThis NC food tech company is about more than crops - it's addressing waste, hunger as well - Wolfpack Investor Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/research.ncsu.edu\/win\/this-nc-food-tech-company-is-about-more-than-crops-its-addressing-waste-hunger-as-well\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"This NC food tech company is about more than crops - it's addressing waste, hunger as well - Wolfpack Investor Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Wolfpack Investor Network (\u201cWIN\u201d) is North Carolina State University\u2019s angel investor group that provides capital and guidance to NC State connected, early-stage companies. 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