A sustainable production route

Natural vanilla is a complex blend of compounds, obtained from the seed pods of the vanilla orchid. Within this blend the most important component is vanillin. Because of the cost and scarcity of the natural product, synthetic vanillin is widely used for mass market products.

Vanilla and vanillin are together one of the most important fragrance and flavouring products in the world, with the total market worth ca USD 600 million (and a total volume of ca 18,000 tonnes). Only a small fraction of this volume consists of natural vanilla, with the majority being synthetic vanillin.

Both the natural vanilla extract and synthetic vanillin are used as flavouring agents in foods and beverages, with most important applications being confectionery and dairy products. Vanillin is also used in the fragrance industry, for example in perfumes and cleaning products and to mask unpleasant tastes in medicines or livestock fodder.

The commercial opportunity for Evolva is to construct a high yield yeast based fermentation route to both vanillin and other vanilla flavour components. Success in this approach will mean that a natural vanilla product, with appealing product quality, pricing and supply chain properties could be made available for use in a wide variety of food and other products.

Progress

In March 2010 Evolva announced it was participating in a four year initiative supported by FØSU (the Danish Council for Strategic Research) to establish a commercially viable and environmentally acceptable production of vanillin by fermentation. Evolva is collaborating with research groups from the University of Copenhagen and the Danish Technical University in this work.

During 2010 the biosynthetic pathway has been successfully constructed and Evolva owns a number of pending and granted patent applications relating to the approach.

In 2011, we achieved an important intermediate production yield target. Based on the yield we have reached, the production costs are lowered to a level where fermented vanillin would already be competitive in certain geographical markets. Recent EU regulatory changes have strengthened the competitive advantage of the proposed product. The next step will be to further increase the process yield while preparing to scale-up the process in 2012.

Scientific paper

Heterologous pathways for biosynthesis of vanillin from glucose established in fission yeast and baker’s yeast. The Article for free download.