Use plant protein concentrate for science-based sustainability [Interview]

“By 2050 if we go on as we are currently, there won’t be enough food to feed 10 billion people,” said Alojas CEO Maurizio Decio. “We need to look and rethink the way we eat and produce food. We are not against animal ingredients because there are some animal-based ingredients that are relatively sustainable; what we are doing is trying to minimise the impact on the environment with the products we produce more sustainably in a measurable way.”

“To extract the protein from pea or fava or other agricultural commodities, [you can use] a wet process. This is the most successful process to produce relatively high-purity plant protein but it consumes 15 times the weight of pea in water, uses chemicals, and then uses energy for drying,” the CEO explained.

“The amount of water that an isolate factory consumes is enormous. We didn’t go for that process for this reason, we went for a dry process […] where you mill, use air to separate and the ingredient is ready.”

“[The dry process] gives you a product that has between 50 and 60% protein. You need to know how to use it because it contains a significant quantity of starch and fiber, so we help our customers to use it in their products. If you teach the customer to use it, the advantage in sustainability is unmatched. In many applications, the use of concentrate doesn’t make much difference when compared to the use isolates.”

“We are crop agnostic, which is one of the consequences of being sustainability-focused. We only process crops that are surrounding the factory within a radius of around 400 to 500 km. We are not going to get pea from Canada or the other side of the world and transport it to Latvia. We process what we can source locally and where we cannot source locally, we find partners in other agricultural areas that can process for us.”

“We use pea and fava beans but we could also source something else if it it is grown in the region,” said Maurizio Decio. “For example, buckwheat is a very interesting crop that is grown in Latvia. We haven’t yet thought about valorising it but that could be the next step.”