Roquette India in Mumbai

The very recent settling of Roquette in new premises in India, more precisely in Mumbai, requires taking into account specific trends, in terms of nutrition and health, of this amazing country, very welcoming and full of contrasts.

Frost & Sullivan, a global growth consulting company that partners with clients to support the development of innovative growth strategies, had invited Marie-Hélène Saniez-Degrave, Head Nutrition and Health research and development programs in Roquette, to give a talk in June 2008 at the Symposium "Creating value through Innovation".

This was a great opportunity to define what means "sustainable innovation" for Roquette through a synthetic presentation of the Research program NUTRAHUB^®. The oral presentation was entitled "Sustainable innovation through innovative ingredients from vegetable sources".

Sustainable innovation in the field of Nutrition and Health consists in conceiving and developing functional ingredients while taking into account a lot of sustainable contextual components of this development : for example, some trends and needs of the targeted countries and populations, some characteristics of the raw materials used and of the targeted bioactive products to be extracted.

This idea has been illustrated by a few examples.

The Leguminous plants farming industry: this type of cultivation doesn't require for example much fertilizers, exhibits low needs for irrigation, allows extraction of proteins and micro-constituents without using any chemical solvent, and generates products at low risk of contamination (e.g. mycotoxines, pesticides) and not identified as major allergens.
Exploring the Microalgae farming: this cultivation requires mainly CO2 and light, is a "hors-sol" type of farming, leads to production of dietary substitutes for fish farming. It comes within the scope of the exploration, extension and keeping of the biodiversity and will allow emerging of new functional bioactive components (for example anti-pathogenic micronutrients).
The research on innovative functional products: these can be designed not only for preventing and reducing the risks of chronic illnesses linked to ageing and/or diets, but also for improving wellness and reducing suffering of ill people.
Screening unknown richness of some dietary by-products still unexploited in human diet, to make them economically accessible to deficient populations.

This conference was an opportunity for Roquette to check the real interest and need of India for some essential products not only aimed at decreasing the risks of diabetes, hypertension, renal failure and ocular pathologies, but also for decreasing other risks linked to some nutritional deficiencies.

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