Valio R&D addresses technology and process opportunities alongside nutrition and health benefits, a rare combination that continues to produce startling innovations.

Valio’s Process Technology Group lies at the heart of this innovation stream and is headed up by Research Manager Dr Olli Tossavainen overseeing a team that includes scientists, technicians and academics bursting with new ideas. “Our role is to propose, plan and implement process technology projects,” Olli explains.

Research and development in practice with members of the process technology team and their colleagues (left to right) Anne Ala-Kahrakuusi, Reetta Tikanmäki, Timo Sibakov, Soile Järviö and Kirsi Rajakari

Over the years, the Group has also produced more than 50 theses and 100 scientific journal publications, and submitted a great many patents whose pedigree is most famously exemplified by Valio’s unique Zero Lactose™ technology. That particular development points up the value of looking beyond the dairy industry for inspiration, specifically in this case to adapt an established process – chromatographic separation as used extensively in the sugar industry – to a new purpose.

Understanding milk

The Valio Process Technology Group’s work focuses on milk, its components and their application. This involves for instance researching and designing milk protein fractionation techniques, fermentation processes and exploring the potential of enzyme technology for milk.

Milk is a complex entity created by nature on whose work Valio builds in a natural and intuitive fashion. Our key expertise lies in understanding milk. How to adjust its composition, remove and process components, and produce novel value added dairy products that offer consumers health effects, improved taste and excellent cooking properties to name but a few. Unsurprisingly, we also provide technical and patent support for the Innovation Group and Valio’s licensing function, says Olli.

Technology push or consumer driven?

Markets are dividing and segmenting, continuously presenting fresh consumer needs necessitating new process and fractionation technologies. So the market drives the science just as innovation can tap into latent opportunities. Valio Zero Lactose™ technology and its application uncovered the true scale of lactose intolerant consumers’ longing to be able to drink milk that tastes as it should.

Valio is a technology innovator

The Process Technology Group was established in the mid 1970s and began working with whey, its demineralisation, and milk protein fractionation, developing new technologies and ingredients that further down the road resulted in for instance the chromatographic technique that underpins today’s Zero Lactose™ products.

Along the way, the team came up with different methods to extract salts from whey and lower its mineral content, leading to worldwide successes with food ingredients such as Valio DEMI™ powder. We have worked with lactose and lactose derivatives producing for instance oligosaccharides which aid digestion.

Exciting compounds such as bioactive peptides are now being produced for Valio’s Evolus® technology, and most recently a special peptide component was derived to supply a sufficient daily dose for Valio’s unique Evolus® Double Effect spread, the world’s first product in its class to provide a double effect health benefit, simultaneously lowering cholesterol and helping to control blood pressure.

Business opportunities going forward

We keep a careful eye out for technologies that can be extended to benefit our licensees. Valio researchers and technicians instinctively look beyond contemporary applications and have the belief and persistence to realise valuable proposals. A great deal has already been achieved to promote consumer well-being, customers’ and licensees’ business, and contribute to food industry science worldwide (see box). And there’s much more to come, says Dr Tossavainen.

Looking beyond the current technology portfolio, there are a number of areas that offer great promise. Milk has long been adjusted for fat content and then e.g. for lactose content. Milk proteins, minerals and vitamins can be adjusted in the same way and that’s just the beginning.

We continue to work on augmenting Valio’s lactose free technology, aiming to optimise quality for the consumer and opportunities for our customers by creating new UHT milk products with a longer shelf life. In his doctoral dissertation “Heat-induced changes in lactose hydrolysed milks” published in 2008, Olli studied the changes in lactose free, low lactose HYLA® and ordinary milks during manufacture and storage, and did in fact develop a method to improve the shelf life of lactose free milk drink, yielding a patent application for the production of UHT milk by the complete removal of milk sugars via chromatographic separation.

In the pipeline

Valio is developing new technologies for the fractionation of components of milk or whey in membrane or chromatographic processes. In the field of fermentation processes, we are looking to progress bioactive peptide production to reduce costs and further improve taste.

The group is also studying the possibilities offered by novel enzymes; lactase enzymes have become integral to a large variety of lactose free and low lactose products. We are working on new kinds of enzyme whose application and combination hold out genuine promise in the development of new kinds of dairy product.

Trends and challenges

Consumer needs are changing fast and technology development must stay at least one step ahead. Up-and-coming trends indicate for instance that the demand for innovative low fat products is shifting towards those with a medium fat content, creating challenges that Valio can be relied upon to rise to.