The Biopress range, suitable for a variety of industrial applications
The Biopress site in Tonneins (47) boasts the versatile, high-performance facilities required to create products for a wide range of industrial applications. As a result, soya bean transformation processes like extrusion and crushing have allowed Groupe Berkem to offer even better products for the Health, Beauty & Nutrition and Industrial sectors . A range of solutions have also been developed for specific markets, such as food processing and manufacturing.
Animal Feed
Soya flour is produced by crushing soya cake and used in a range of animal feed products (such as feed for cattle and fish). Because of its high protein content and nutritional value, soya meal is an excellent ingredient for many types of animal feed.
Human Nutrition
Made through the extrusion of soya cake, organic textured proteins make highly nutritious meat substitutes. The demand for textured soya proteins has increased as producers seek to offer meat alternatives to consumers who are increasingly changing their eating habits.
Packaging
The site at Tonneins is equipped with several automatic and semi-automatic packaging lines that allow it to offer a range of packaging services, including bottling. The company has the capacity to bottle and package around one million litres of oil a year.
Industry
With properties similar to petroleum derivatives, while simultaneously being renewable and biodegradable, vegetable oils can be used in a wide range of applications in a variety of fields. Surfactants made from vegetable oils are also used in a number of industrial applications and are particularly sought-after for their solubilising, detergent, wetting and emulsifying properties.
Strengthening Groupe Berkem’s business offering
With this acquisition, Groupe Berkem’s plant-based chemistry business has added the sourcing of an essential raw material to its value chain. The Group can now benefit from a local supply of technical vegetable oils, since Biopress is geographically close to the Group’s Gardonne plant in south-west France. The Biopress facilities also provide significant new storage space for the Group, which is anticipating future growth in its business. This will enable the Group to expand its production capacity and process more than 8,000 tonnes of plants a year.