Australian investment at FoodWaikato

6 August 2015

Australian investment at FoodWaikato

Nu-Mega Ingredients, a subsidiary of Australian public listed company Clover Corporation, has made a significant investment commissioning trial work with their microencapsulated powders at the recently expanded FoodWaikato Plant at Waikato Innovation Park in Hamilton.

Nu-Mega supplies products into the global infant nutrition and medical foods markets. Nu-Mega’s technology enables nutritional oils to be microencapsulated into spray dried powders to be added to infant formula, foods and beverages.

Nu-Mega has invested close to $600,000 in the FoodWaikato plant to produce its microencapsulated Omega 3 and Omega 6 powders.

“We are thrilled to have signed on Nu-Mega as one of our customers,” said FoodWaikato Plant manager Dave Shute.

“Nu-Mega’s investment has enabled FoodWaikato to install the process capability required to produce their technically demanding products.”

Shute said FoodWaikato had recently completed a number of successful trials for Nu-Mega and were pleased to be soon starting to produce commercial quantities of their products.

Nu-Mega’s spray dried microencapsulated powders use a CSIRO patented technology to stabilise the sensitive Omega 3 and 6 oils.

“Our proprietary technologies protect those sensitive oils from oxidation, allowing them to be added to infant formula, foods and beverages,” explains Nu-Mega Ingredients chief executive Peter Davey.

“The Waikato facility provides Nu-Mega with the ability to commercialise new microencapsulated technologies and products.

“The facility is an excellent location with the expanding infant formula manufacturing industry in New Zealand. We have already seen interest from existing and new customers,” he said.

Food Waikato’s $5.7 m expansion was opened last month by MBIE minister Steven Joyce, adding a nutritional formulations ‘wet side’ processing capability.
The first stage of the plant, a spray dryer facility, was opened in May 2012 at a cost of $12.8m, however higher value products like infant formula and aged care formula tend to involve mixing of ingredients in complex formulations.
The new expanded facility now offers this capability.

Mixing offsite and transporting to FoodWaikato created regulatory, product integrity and processing challenges, says Waikato Innovation Park chief executive Stuart Gordon.

“The expansion has allowed us to work with customers like Nu-Mega to expand their manufacturing footprint into New Zealand.”

FoodWaikato is a subsidiary of Hamilton City Council-owned Waikato Innovation Park and is the Waikato component of the Callaghan Innovation-sponsored New Zealand Food Innovation Network.
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