The three year old company received a £10,000 ($14,955) grant from Food and Drink iNet – a consortium managed association that encourages innovation – to develop the process.
“We are converting a freely available resource that is currently seen as waste from the fruit processing and cider industries into a nutritious and commercially viable snack,” said Glen Martyn, director at Omniceutica.
“The amount of food wasted throughout the food industry is of huge financial and environmental concern, so the timing of this innovation is right,” Martyn added.
The snacks have been made using a new drying process that is less energy intensive and retains more nutrients than conventional systems, Omniceutica said. Experts from the University of Nottingham were involved in the nutritional content analysis of the snacks.
Omniceutica develops and produces pilot-scale production batches to test ideas and concepts ready for commercial scale-up. It said it is exploring patent issues before the product is prepared for marketing and sale through licensing agreements to larger manufacturers.
From waste to food…
Jo Murphy, an advisor with the Food and Drink iNet, said that finding alternative uses for by-products in the food and drink sector should be a core target for industry.
“Omniceutica has come up with an inventive way of creating a new product using ingredients that would have previously been thrown away,” Murphy said.
She said the technology will benefit small and medium-sized cider makers in the East Midlands region of the UK as it opens doors to a productive outlet for some of their waste products.
Apple and orange waste into flours
BakeryandSnacks.com previously spoke to a team of Irish researchers that have developed gluten-free fruit flours from apple and orange waste.
The research is being conducted at Dublin-based Food Research Center Teagasc and is funded by the Irish Department of Agriculture and Food.
The researchers are using the pomace (core, pips and skin) of apples and pranges processed at Bulmers, The Apple Farm and Wild Orchard facilities in Ireland to make flours for baked goods.