The Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture is funding the research
Germany based start-up Savanna Ingredients will in future produce real sugar without calories with energy from “home-harvested” solar power.
Solar panels were installed on the roofs of all production and warehouse facilities on the Savanna site in Elsdorf. Stephan Mohr, Head of Process and Process Development says, “The solar system allows us to generate the majority of the energy that we need for the production of allulose and cellobiose from sunlight. The system is connected to the public power grid in order to feed unnecessary energy into the grid if necessary. “
Savanna CEO Dr. Timo Koch reveals, “It is important to us that we can sustainably produce our sugar without calories using electricity from renewable energy. With this we rely fully on the power of the sun. We use your energy twice. Once in our manufacturing process in Elsdorf and in the fields when growing the Rhenish sugar beet. The sugar beet is one of the plants with the best CO2 storage capacity, which also helps the environment. ”
The Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture is funding the research project “SMARBS” or “Novel Low-Calorie Sugar in Food” from Savanna Ingredients as part of the National Reduction Strategy for Salt, Fat and Sugar.
The project is funded based on a decision of the German Bundestag. The project is sponsored by the Federal Agency for Agriculture and Food (BLE) as part of the program to promote innovation. In addition to Savanna and the associated company Pfeifer & Langen GmbH & Co. KG, other companies (KRUEGER GmbH & Co. KG) and universities (RWTH Aachen, HOWL) are also involved.