Well-being on the menu in Wallonia’s food and agriculture industry

What we eat has a major influence on our state of health and well-being. How the nutritional qualities of our food are preserved and the pollution released in its production and packaging are also major concerns for the future of mankind and our planet. In order to cope with these major issues, the Walloon food ingredients industry enjoys a structure and stimulus that puts it in pole position in world markets.

The food industry is a large and dynamic sector in Wallonia. With turnover of 6.8 billion Euros and 20,000 employees, it is the second industrial employer in Wallonia. Since 2000 it has seen average annual growth of 4% in its production, placing it at the top of the European average. It also has strong growth potential in growing sectors and is a world leader in some of them: ingredients, health foods, ready meals and specific and regional products of recognized quality...

The food and agriculture industry in Wallonia

Wagralim: 38.9 million Euros invested

In order to improve its regional competitiveness in sectors in which it already has strong potential, the Walloon Region has created competitive clusters in the context of its Marshall Plan for economic development. The goal: to make Wallonia a world-scale competitive industrial area by creating networks of excellence and innovation, partnerships and clusters, and to develop activity and employment in this sector, Wallonia’s second industrial employer.

In this context, the agricultural industry has forged itself a strategy focussing on three major directions:

• to develop high added value products by improving innovation and quality according to customers’ and the markets’ needs.

• to improve companies’ profitability by improving their integration and sustainability.

• to increase the production capacity and size of businesses by facilitating their positioning in growing markets and by increasing their sales capacity.

Behind these three major strategic directions, four areas of development have been identified in order to encourage industries to rise to the sector’s new challenges. The first is to do with “health” foods. It supports the development of products and ingredients meeting nutritional and/or health claims. The second has to do with innovative production or preserving technologies. It promotes the development of products stemming from production or preserving processes (able to call on environmentally friendly technologies), with a view to preserving organoleptic qualities, increasing the shelf life of products and reducing additives. The third area proposes promoting the development of bio-packaging for food use, produced from renewable and biodegradable sources. Finally, the fourth area promotes the development of industries (sectors of industry) involved in sustainable food production: efficiency of production processes and sustainable management of inputs and sub-products.

The Wagralim ambition is to position Wallonia’s industries at the cutting edge of European competitiveness and to strengthen the sector´s growth dynamic by creating 3,000 additional jobs over the next 10 years (including 1,000 created by the Cluster). Seventy university research teams, 5 research centres (http://www.wagralim.be/fr/partenaires/scientifiques/centres-de-recherche.htm) and several higher educational establishments (http://www.wagralim.be/fr/partenaires/scientifiques/hautes-ecoles.htm) have signed up since the start of the Cluster’s activities.

Creating “health” foods: Walnut

For a long time now, obesity has not been exclusively a problem for the United States, but a health problem on an international scale. The nutritional value of our food is a determining factor in the fight against this scourge! The competitive cluster is encouraging producers therefore to create “health” foods and is initially inviting the players in the sector to undergo training to help them understand and provide proof of health claims for products with the goal of indentifying new components/ingredients that have nutritional qualities, of optimising the health value of products being developed and, finally, of opening Walloon companies to international markets for health products.

In addition, the cluster supports companies wishing to prepare a range of products with scientifically demonstrable “health benefits” by developing tools for evaluating the bioactive properties of some of their ingredients. Members of three great families of nutritional substances - polyunsaturated fatty acids, fibre and polyphenols - , these ingredients are proposed by the industries and orientate the work carried out in the laboratories. Their functional effects on the two great public health problems represented by metabolic syndrome and intestinal function are at the heart of the project.

In this way the cluster intends promoting the sale by 2010 of new food products that are nutrifunctional and innovative. The creation of analytical tools is also encouraged and is illustrated in particular by the “study of food intervention in man: a balanced menu”, demonstrating the health benefits of Omega 3 content in the diet. Implicitly, the objective is also to create an inter-university and industrial network, to stimulate patent applications, to write scientific papers and, of course, to create new service companies.

Extending the life of food products: consAlim

Identifying the deterioration mechanisms in food remains a complex domain linked to a number of factors: the nature of the food matrix, its physical and chemical composition - in particular the type of bonding with water and its possibilities for migration within the product -, structure and texture, endogenous microflora, the processing processes used, the packaging techniques chosen, the conditions of preservation during storage and commercial transport.

A better understanding of changes in the behaviour of products in order to extend their life and preservation is therefore at the centre of the research being carried out. In particular it concerns refrigerated products with foods of plant and animal origin and composite foods such as ready meals, fermented drinks that include regional products such as beers and various malts, and living products with lactic ferments and yeasts.

Models created on the basis of this research will enable companies’ competitiveness to be improved, bringing healthy products to the market with an extended shelf life, and thus able to reach destinations further a field.

Bio-packaging: BIOWALL

This third type of project has to do with the development of bioplastics of the polyactide type intended for food use. The idea is to produce PLA (polylactate) based bio-packaging, made from agricultural raw materials.

Fibersol and PROFLAX projects

Whether it is flax or cereals, extraction and refining methods do not allow all their nutritional qualities to be preserved. This is the reason why the Wagralim competitive cluster has included the Fibersol and Proflax projects among its priorities. The first highlights the value of soluble and fermentable dietary fibre in safeguarding health, in particular that of the digestive tract. The aim of the Fibersol project is to produce and sell a new soluble and fermentable dietary fibre extracted from cereals, a traditionally important component in our diet (20% of the daily intake of calories by volume in western man).

Proflax has to do with technology used for the extraction of flax seed. While traditional processes for processing flax concentrate on the oil, mainly used in the non-food sector, and on oil cake, an extraction residue used in animal feed, the issue consists of finding functional foods that are potentially useful due to their nutritional and/or techno-functional properties.

Food preservation: the Polygal project

How can the preservation of foodstuffs be optimized by using a combination of lactates and polyphenols ?

Natural preservatives, present in nature, lactates and polyphenols answer consumers’ three fundamental preoccupations: they are natural products, capable of improving the shelf life of foods (mainly meat and fish) and possess better organoleptic properties.

By systematic study of the bacteriostatic and bactericide effects of lactate-polyphenol synergic formulations, the sector intends marketing these formulated products for the purpose of preservation and limiting the deterioration of the organoleptic characteristics of food. In this way they will constitute an alternative to certain synthetic additives, in particular in foods in which the latter are not permitted.

Finally, beyond the outlet dedicated to food and therefore general consumption, the pharmaceutical, chemical, cosmetic, veterinary, textile and health sectors, etc. are increasingly using these components and thus establishing new markets for themselves.

Most of the companies active in the food ingredients and flavourings sector already have their own research laboratories. They are directing their work towards future technologies and organic production, but also towards so called “bespoke” products in response to a customer’s specific demand. To meet these R&D challenges, they benefit from highly qualified staff composed mainly of university level chemists, biologists and agricultural specialists.

We are seeing, in Wallonia, a food ingredients sector, supported by an enterprising competitive cluster, working to consolidate its reputation for quality.