SA milk technology hailed
2010-07-15 08:05
Cape Town - A South African company that has developed a new liquid purifying technology has been hailed in the UK as "most likely to succeed" at the recent Industrial Energy Efficiency Accelerator (IEEA) conference hosted by Dairy UK.
SurePure's system is an alternative to purifying milk with heat. Instead, it uses ultraviolet light to achieve pasteurisation at lower cost - and it's safe - according to the company.
"There are no consumer negatives using photopurification: because nothing is added to the liquid (like preservatives are) and nothing is taken out (like filtration does) and the bio-chemistry of the liquid is not effected like heat-treatment does, this is one of the safest purification processes that can be used," Stephen Miller, Managing Director of SurePure told News24.
He said that the technology took a decade to develop and has cost the company well over R100m and has been commercially available in SA for the past three years.
The technology was highlighted at the IEEE Conference, which explored ways to increase energy efficiency, as part of the IEEA programme, which is aimed at enabling dairy companies to drive forward technologies which help deliver the environmental improvements.
Interest
Miller said that the system used less energy that traditional methods and had no negative effect on the nutrient value of the milk.
"The SurePure system has no negative effect on the protein, fat, lactose or vitamins in milk and under normal operating conditions all the natural constituents stay intact in milk while using the photopurification technology," he said.
Unlike thermal pasteurisation, SurePure system adds nothing to the milk and retains important immune builders.
"When you pasteurise milk, the heat destroys the immune-fighting properties. Raw milk also contains enzymes, the most important health-building ingredient of all, which are inflammation fighters and immune builders, but they are also destroyed within minutes by heat during pasteurisation," said Miller.
He said that there has some South African processors have adopted the technology, but there has been more interest in Europe and the US for the technology.
Miller also said that the technology could be applied to other areas.
"Perhaps some of the most exciting new applications are industrial and even quasi-medical in their nature: we have an innovative calf-milk purification system commercially available, are working to keep the enzymes intact in animal blood plasma, and are even in trials to see whether the technology could be used to purify human breast milk to feed to premature infants," he said.