Context/Overview

It has been estimated that 1.3 billion tonnes of agri-food waste are produced every year (1). Many of these ‘by-products’ contain a rich source of phytochemicals and can be high in protein. Valogen has developed a patented method of extracting these phytochemicals and producing bioactive peptides that have already been shown to exhibit statistically significant and dose dependent bioactivity (2). Valogen’s initial focus is on rapeseed (canola) but the technology platform can be applied to any other high protein by-product.

State of the art/Analogs

Traditionally cosmetic and other bioactive single molecular entity actives such as peptides have been produced synthetically, at high cost, or through fermentation. It is increasingly understood that a more complex mixture may have a synergistic benefit increasing the efficacy considerably, often referred to as the entourage effect or phytocomplex activity. Our approach produces a natural plant-derived mixture with defined molecular properties at low-cost producing a very attractive cost-efficacy ratio product.

AIM – Fill in the gap

Our company has its origins in a working mixed arable and livestock farm in the UK that also produces rapeseed oil. The amount of rapeseed press-cake remaining after oil-pressing is considerable and some can be fed to livestock as a rich protein source. This use of the solid by-product material provides value to the farm but has a low resale value. By extracting proteins and peptides the resulting botanical mixture commands economic vales at least a hundred times that value and potentially even higher in certain applications (3).

We work with many farmers and oil-producers in the UK and are extending this reach to oil producers across Europe and North America where canola is widely grown. Much of the North American canola is genetically modified but the 5-10% that isn’t still creates a huge quantity of this agri-food by-product. Our process has been developed with the extensive expertise and support of the Biorenewables Development Centre, York, UK, and with generous support from Innovate UK.

Your start-up: who are you

Valogen is a B2B active ingredient manufacturing company which was founded in 2019 by a founding team of innovators and agricultural experts. Since then, the team has grown to include a wide breadth of expertise across finance, life sciences, biotechnology and food/nutrition experts enabling Valogen to access multiple market sectors such as cosmetic, nutrition and healthcare.

Current team: 6 people

Intellectual property: 2 patents pending, deep process know-how, trademarks

Website: https://www.valogen.bio

What do you offer

Valogen’s strong team offers deep sector expertise across cosmetic, nutrition and healthcare applications. Our proprietary process has been optimized to produce high yields and is cost-effective. We can work with market-facing brands to supply active ingredients and also with food producers that create proteinaceous by-products to provide them with an additional revenue stream. Our current rapeseed ingredients have been demonstrated to have strong anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, mitochondrial ATP stimulation, wound healing and cell viability and mobility enhancing properties as well as multiple nutritional and flavour benefits (2).

Why you

We are a collaborative company and our strong links with the Biorenewables Development Centre and multiple academic centres of excellence enable us to access considerable expertise to adapt our process to novel and innovative feedstocks. The low cost-of-goods of our active ingredients enable appealing margins across cosmetic, nutrition and healthcare. We will continue to innovate building on out intellectual property created to date to provide proprietary solutions to bespoke applications.

Challenges

The 3-4 years spent optimizing our process has allowed us to tackle the technical challenges that have enabled a productive and cost-efficient process. Different sectors require different regulatory pathways which can be worked through collaboratively with our business customers for a wide range of consumer-facing applications.

Perspectives

The need for non-petrochemical solutions will only increase and biotechnology is projected to be on an upward path across the long-term. Innovative uses of upcycled agri-food by-products is vital to maintain a viable circular bioeconomy especially as pressures on the agri-food industry increase due to a growing global population and unrelenting climate challenges. Valogen is ideally placed to support these pressures and create additional value for farmers, food producers and consumers.