In today’s society, people are more conscious about what they eat and consumers request ingredients that have been treated as little as possible and are as close as possible to the original products from nature. Yet these same consumers require products that work, look and taste good. To fulfil these needs, Unimills uses new green modification processes that treat our natural raw materials as carefully as we can.

 

Dry fractionation
Dry fractionation is a process to obtain high melting fats without the formation of trans fats and without the use of chemical solvents. During dry fractionation, a high melting fraction of palm oil is separated from the remaining low melting fraction by controlled crystallisation. Strictly controlled heating, cooling and agitation create the required right crystals with a narrow specification window. When the optimal crystals have been formed, the oil slurry is pumped through a filter press resulting in products such as superoleins with very low melting points, special steep melting mid fractions and very hard super stearins.

 

Green flaked Fats
Unimills produces flaked vegetable fats with a high melting point (ca 55°C - 70°C). They are used for many different applications such as coating material for spices, chewing gum, bread improvers and cosmetics. And also as crystallization starter or as a hard fraction in fluid margarines and frying fats. Unimills is able to flake superstearin, a secondary palm oil fraction with an IV of 14 and a melting point of 60oC. These can be used as green alternatives for currently used fats.

 

Enzymatic Rearrangement
Enzymatic rearrangement is an interesterification process based on natural enzymes. To strengthen its leading position in interesterification technology, Unimills will open a new pilot plant on enzymatic rearrangement in July 2006. The enzymatic rearrangement process provides much more flexibility than the traditional process as it both allows almost random distribution of the fatty acids along the glycerol chain but also predominant rearrangement at the “1” and “3” position. The reaction is relatively slow and can be stopped at any given time and that will give additional possibilities to tailor the functionality of the product.

 

Mild Refining
Golden Hope developed a unique mild refining process, which resulted in Red Palm Superoleins in which the naturally present beta-carotene and tocotrienols are retained. The resulting new product, which recently became available in Europe, can be used for producing spreads without additives (like emulsifiers and colorants). It is expected that in the near future consumers of spreads and cooking products will be interested in natural products, which can be obtained and produced by mild processing methods and conditions.