By Shannon Behary, senior editor
6 July 2022 - Steffen Ruf, Global Product Manager for Vitamins A and E at DSM Nutritional Products, recalls that when a DSM colleague came up to him with the idea, he was convinced it would almost never be practical. Fermenting vitamin A, one of the least stable vitamins out there, a vitamin which degrades in contact with oxygen or heat? “I remember, I was sitting there, and I was saying ‘it cannot work’… it is so susceptible, and you would have water, you would have oxygen…how could that work?”
However, he says, a few subsequent high-level experiments demonstrated that, in fact, neither the stability nor any other basic issues proved to be dealbreakers. “They all came back with a tick mark. We were totally surprised. And then we said, ‘ok, let’s jump on it’.”
A few years of development later, and DSM was finally ready to announce to the world what it believes is the world’s first bio-based vitamin A — a product which results not from a synthetic chemical process, but which is made by a specially developed strain of yeast. As per DSM’s press release last week, they are starting with the cosmetics and personal care market, whose small volume requirements and high interest in quality and sustainability make it a natural launch point for such an innovation. However, according to both Ruf and to Joerg von Allmen, DSM’s Vice President for Fat Soluble Vitamins & Carotenoids, bio-based vitamin A production is absolutely coming to the animal nutrition industry—and it will be revolutionary.
A greener and more decentralised process
Most notably, replacing a production process based on petrochemicals with one based on renewable inputs offers significant advantages in terms of sustainability. “We’ll have a massively lower CO2 footprint,” asserts Ruf. Or, in von Allmen’s words, “Until now, the only way to meet the growing demand for vitamin A has been to build new multi-step chemical production facilities requiring more finite resources. DSM’s new bio-based process will significantly reduce the carbon footprint and waste of vitamin A manufacturing.”
Moreover, and increasingly important in a world subject to supply chain disruption, this breakthrough offers the possibility of a production process with fewer (or at least different) points of potential failure. “If you look at today’s vitamin A process, there are slight differences in the various ways of production of the different market players. But basically, everything starts from crude oil, and they are, at the end of the day, pretty similar,” says Ruf. Therefore, the development of a second production process, with different sorts of inputs, makes the category of vitamin A less vulnerable to supply shocks affecting the petrochemical industry.
Of course, neither advantage matters if the process is so stunningly expensive that bio-based vitamin A will remain a niche product. Happily, that does not appear to be the case. Although it is still early days for this production process, von Allmen states that they foresee production costs at a similar level to those of conventionally-produced vitamin A. “We’re confident that we’re on the path to achieve that,” he asserts.
Indeed, Ruf adds, “If you look at the current [production] processes, they are basically at the end of the learning curve, of the improvement curve…the [improvements] are getting smaller, because you are basically at the end of what is even theoretically possible. Whereas with this new process, we are really on track, and the target is to be on the same level, which does not exclude that we might have even further process improvements in the future.”
The future of production
Therefore, the company is committed to bringing this product not only to cosmetics, but to all of its vitamin applications, including human and animal nutrition.
“We will continue with Sisseln, of course, but future capacity increases [in vitamin A] will only be with this new process technology,” Ruf states.
Of course, given the importance the company has in this market, it is obvious that it will continue operating its conventional vitamin production assets for the foreseeable future. Ruf says “there is a clear commitment to Sisseln.”
Still, with a bio-based process, additional capacity can be introduced as justified by demand, since small fermenters are cheaper and simpler investments than the large-volume and highly-complex petrochemical operations required for synthetic production. “You don’t have to make that one big fixed investment into a big chemical plant, you can actually incrementally grow that capacity or volume over time. That’s the beauty of it,” says von Allmen.
This also means that they are less limited in terms of where production can be located. “It could be basically [anywhere in the] world,” Ruf observes. For the moment, the company is looking to base its initial installations near to existing DSM sites — “nothing greenfield”, he says. Of course, there are various technical requirements, such as the need for wastewater treatment capacity, energy, or knowledgeable personnel. There are economic considerations too, such as locating near to where the carbon-based feedstock for the yeast is available. Proximity to potential clients is another factor to consider. In Ruf’s words: “Looking over the last two years, the aspect of transport has [taken on] a different weight in the whole calculation to what it had before.”
All these factors are clearly still being weighed up. While the company has said a full launch for bio-based vitamin A in the cosmetics industry is coming in 2023, there is no target year for when the product might launch in animal nutrition. Ruf and von Allmen caution that time is needed, both for the mechanics of the scale-up and also for dialogue with the industry, including both with regulators and, most importantly, with potential clients.
Still, says Ruf, “we have started an engineering project. For that you go through the various phases, of course. It may be a bit early. But we are committed to that… we said ‘we have to start now, because we really want to bring this to the market.’” This is seconded by von Allmen: “We are not waiting for all the dialogue to conclude before moving forward. We’re starting the work in parallel because we know it takes some time.”
Gauging market interest
According to Ruf, before last week’s announcement, the company had communicated very little about the development. “We kept it in our own circles,” he says. “Even within the company, we kept it [among] a very specific group who were working on this, because it’s something really game-changing and it’s very precious IP.”
This means that they have no test balloons to help give an idea of how the animal nutrition sector will take to bio-based vitamin A, unlike in the personal care sector, which has given strong signals that it prefers natural-origin or renewable ingredients. For Ruf, it remains something of an open question what the market will actually pay for a lower-CO2 footprint product; as he sees it, this was a fairly marginal concern even just a few years ago, but has now truly become a serious priority for many.
In one scenario, he predicts, “it could be that other customers who were not [previously] buying much from us say ‘hey guys, we want to have that [bio-based product] and you’re the only ones who have it,’ which would then of course have an impact on our scenarios on the supply side.”
On the other hand, alternative scenarios are possible. Some might decide that, with vitamins representing only very tiny fraction of the total CO2 footprint of the feed, reducing that small fraction, even significantly, is not a very compelling prospect for them, and might not be willing to pay any kind of premium. Understanding where different clients will line up on these issues is impossible to predict; it will, therefore, require lots of dialogue with the industry, which DSM is eager to start.
Still, von Allmen says, one thing is important to understand: while the company is very eager to understand the needs and priorities of the market on this issue, this feedback will not change its dedication to move its own production in the direction of a greener, more climate-friendly process. “That dialogue is to help each other throughout the value chain understand what’s possible… it’s an exchange with the industry, but it’s not going to stop us from going down this route. We have decided as a company to go down the route for bio-based vitamin A.”
