OREANDA-NEWS. AQUANOVA RUS, a portfolio company of RUSNANO, has built a plant in the Moscow Region (Dubna) and launched the production of micellar natural food ingredients, bioactive substances, antioxidants, color additives, extracts and preservation agents. The products will be in demand among the food industry enterprises (confectionery, oil and fat, dairy, seafood and meat producers), as well as cosmetic product and pharmaceutical manufacturers. The new production facility is the 61st plant of RUSNANO.

RUSNANO’s partners in the project are AQUANOVA AG (Germany) and KIMA LIMITED. The Russian corporation invested RUB 365 mln in the project.

The project is based on the German technology transferred from AQUANOVA AG and allows active organic matter to be encapsulated in micelles with a diameter of 30 nm. Such efficient use of expensive natural active ingredients can remarkably reduce their quantity in finished products while ensuring the required quality and increasing their bio accessibility. This enables significant decrease of production costs.

According to analytics, the volume of food ingredients market in Russia is estimated at $2.5-3 bln. 80% of the market accounts for the import. Thanks to the import substitution policy Russian companies have strong potential in this area.

The plant in Dubna will produce a wide range of micellar natural food ingredients, bioactive substances, cosmetic and pharmaceutical excipients developed and patented by the German partner of the project. AQUANOVA RUS is planning to produce several hundred tons of ingredients for different industries and earn revenue of RUB 300 mln approximately for the first year. The income of the plant is anticipated to increase by three times within the next five years.

Among the first major clients of the production facility are the largest Russian companies and leading enterprises of Belarus and Kazakhstan.

The potential customers are pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries and soft packaging manufacturers.