The company notes that a new market analysis predicts the global probiotics market will grow by 6.8% a year until 2018, driven by Asia-Pacific with Europe as another dominant market in spite of current health claim law issues. In sales terms, this corresponds to $US 27.9 billion in 2011, forecast to reach $US 44.9 billion in 2018.
Increasing culture sales, both in terms of probiotics and food cultures, puts pressure on Chr. Hansen’s production facilities, the company said, and in order to sustain growing customer demand, it is investing in expanding its capacity.
“Over the past years we have worked to turn our production facility at Roskilde south of Copenhagen into a dedicated production site for human health products, both to live up to pharma GMPs and to free capacity at our food culture production site in Copenhagen,” said Henrik Dalboege, executive vice president, Human Health & Nutrition Division, Chr. Hansen.
“We started the construction work on the new freeze-drying plant just before Christmas and I am very pleased to see this project progressing as planned. It is an important element in sustaining the current and future growth of the Human Health & Nutrition Division and its contribution to the entire group.”
The lay-out of the new plant ensures that visitors can observe and inspect the main operations and equipment during the production process, according to the company, and customers will encounter a state-of-the-art production facility with a high level of hygienic design of both clean rooms and production equipment.
Furthermore, Chr. Hansen said that the new plant is designed to improve working conditions and with the use of 1:1 models of different work stations it has been designed and pre-approved according to occupational health and safety standards before the construction work was started. Additional benefits are new modern offices and a new maintenance workshop.
Once finished in spring 2014, Chr. Hansen believes that it will be the world’s largest freeze-drying plant for pharmaceutical grade probiotic cultures.
