Fermentation

The range of the Fermentation Industry has become immense and its products crucial to many other industries, such as pharmaceuticals, food and animal foodstuffs and agriculture : Antibiotics, Vitamins, Enzymes, Polymers, Organic Acids, Amino Acids, ETOH, Steroids, Biopesticides, Yeast and various ferments, amongst many other substances, are all produced today in large quantities.
In addition, genetic engineering has created another generation of valuable substances like interferon, insulin, growth hormones, new seed varieties ... thus extending the range of products resulting from fermentation activities.
The culture of  micro-organisms and the production of  biologically active substances, require a comprehensive medium consisting of carbohydrates, organic nitrogen, minerals, vitamins etc.
Starch, glucose and sorbitol, as carbon sources and corn steep, wheat gluten and potato proteins, as nitrogen source are substrates increasingly bioconverted for use in the preparation of ever large numbers of intermediate products.
The purity, reproductibility and reliability of these substrates are crucial to efficient fermentation, extraction and refining processes.
The ability of microbiologists and biotechnologists to make the most of their know-how, whether in the improvement of strains and the modification of culture conditions, depends profoundly on culture media whose control and reproductibility are guaranteed.
In its plants at Lestrem, Beinheim, Cassano, Benifayo, Vecquemont, Gurnee and Keokuk, Roquette fractionates maize, wheat and potatoes to obtain carbohydrates growth factors, proteins and lipids.

Together with glucides, their existence in refined and consistent form, available in large quantities all year round provides the fermentation industry with precisely what it needs for :

• development of main culture media,
• filtration of culture broth and upgrading of by-products,
• stabilization, drying and packaging of biological substances in both solid and liquid forms.

Roquette also provides fast and regular bulk liquid and powder delivery from all its plants. Each is accompanied by a detailed analysis stored on computer. This can be called up at a moment's notice whenever required by the customer, for instance for official FDA inspections, and can be used to correlate production yields. Advice and help on storage installations and automatic processing facilities required for its products are always available from Roquette.

Fermentation

Chemistry and Industrial applications

Starch is an important constituent of cereals and many plants, and one of the basic components of our diet. In spite of this vital role, starch was until recently of relatively little interest to chemists, who limited themselves to a few simple conversions aimed at giving it the properties of solubility or sweet taste.

For a long time, the macromolecular nature of starch and its distinctive physico-chemical properties discouraged attempts to add value in the form of simple or compound sugars.

With developments in industrial enzymology and sugar chemistry this situation has changed rapidly. The introduction by Roquette in 1962 of double enzymatic conversion of starch gave them the possibility of producing D-glucose, its homologues and derivatives on an industrial scale.

Thirty years on, Roquette, the world leader in the production of sugar alcohols and in particular D-sorbitol, has developed a range of molecules and polymers combining complexity of structure and diversity of function.

Nowadays, the use of environmental-friendly products based on renewable materials is more and more a priority for chemical and industrial companies. This is the reason why Roquette has made starch and sugar chemistry a strategic objective.

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