Orkla Food Ingredients, a business area of Orkla ASA (OSE:ORK), and Renaissance BioScience Corp. have agreed to expand their licence agreement for Orkla to exclusively manufacture and sell Renaissance’s acrylamide-reducing yeast, Acrylow, to food manufacturers in additional new markets in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The agreement builds on the initial exclusive agreement implemented in Q3/2017 that covered the Nordic and Baltic regional markets in Europe.

Thore Svensson, senior vice president of Orkla Food Ingredients, commented, “Since we finalized our agreement with Renaissance last year we have conducted several commercial trials, all of which have shown excellent results and successfully launched the product for sale in the Nordic markets. As the European regulatory structure governing the acrylamide content of many food products and coffee comes into force within a few months, Orkla is pleased to expand its agreement with Renaissance to include Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, in order to make Acrylow available to food manufacturers in those countries.”

Dr. Cormac O’Cleirigh, chief business development officer for Renaissance BioScience, said, “It’s gratifying to see that Orkla and its food manufacturer customers have found our acrylamide-reducing yeast to be effective and easy to use in trials with no sensory impact on the finished product. Orkla is a leader in food quality and safety, and Renaissance is pleased to be partnering with the company to bring Acrylow not only to the already licensed Nordic and Baltic markets but also to these new central European markets.”

Acrylow has shown excellent results in large-scale industrial trials in baked goods and snack foods, as well as in lab-scale tests in French fries, chips and coffee. This yeast was granted GRAS status by the U.S. FDA in 2016 — the same status as conventional baker’s and brewer’s yeasts. It is patent-pending and was developed using classical non-GMO techniques.