DIC Corporation is to build a new extraction plant for Linablue natural blue food colouring. The new US$10 million facility will be located on the site of subsidiary Earthrise Nutritionals, the DIC Group’s U.S. Spirulina production base.
The company said that this move will position DIC to respond effectively to brisk demand for Spirulina, supported by increasing concern for the health benefits and safety of food, as well as to a rapid global shift toward using natural, rather than synthetic, colourings in food, a trend underscored by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s decision in September 2013 to approve Spirulina extract for use in food products.
Construction of the new plant will begin in May 2014 and is expected to take approximately one year.
Rich in more than 50 vitamins and minerals, including calcium and iron, Spirulina is a nutrient-rich blue-green algae that grows naturally in lakes in Africa and Central and South America.
The DIC Group began cultivating Spirulina for use in nutritional supplements and natural food colouring in the late 1970s, becoming the world’s first commercial Spirulina producer. Claiming that it has been the world’s largest Spirulina supplier for more than three decades, the DIC Group today provides Spirulina—the raw material for Linablue—produced in the United States and on Hainan Island in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to customers across the globe.
The new plant will enable the Group to also supply Linablue manufactured in the United States, as well as in the PRC.
A vivid blue natural food colouring, Linablue is made from phycocyanin, a blue colourant extracted from Spirulina. Favoured particularly for colouring jellied sweets and ice pops, Linablue is also used widely in gum, candy-coated chocolate and other confections and has, said the company, benefited from steady growth demand in recent years.
DIC estimates that the global market for natural food colourings will approximately double between now and fiscal year 2018, during which time it also expects its global market share to expand from 20% to 50%. Linablue is claimed to have earned the DIC Group a 90%-plus share of the global market for Spirulina-derived natural blue food colourings, but with that particular market segment expected to expand to between seven and 10 times its present size DIC sees this new investment as crucial to solidifying its dominance.
