In July 2005 Flora Dánica, Argentina’s leading manufacturer of margarine, took a bold step. After 65 years in the Argentine market, they had built up a successful range of table margarines accounting for a 60% share of the consumer market. Then they changed everything! To avoid the formation of trans fatty acids (TFAs), they revised their production process and introduced a new enzymatic process to modify veget­able oils. Then they relaunched all of their margarines with new packaging and the ‘nutriSystem’ symbol to indicate that the products were now free of TFAs.

Mercedes Larrain is Manager of Quality Control and R&D at Flora Dánica. She and her team were responsible for developing the new products. “Overnight we completely changed our packaging and pack design to show that the margarines were different. There is a great risk in changing when you are the leader,” she says. “However, the risk has paid off. Sales of margarine had been declining slowly in recent years, but in 2005 the total Argentine margarine market increased by 4%.”

Mercedes Larrain attributes this primarily to the increasing sales of Flora Dánica’s new products launched with a campaign to promote the health benefits of trans-free margarines.

Cholesterol risk
“It has recently been discovered that TFAs have at least the same impact on the cardiovascular system as saturated fatty acids,” says Mercedes Larrain. “There is a correlation between the intake of TFAs and the increase in cholesterol in the blood. TFAs have also been associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease in epidemiological studies. Argentinians are becoming increasingly health-conscious. Women in particular are watching what they eat and what they give to their children.”

Consumers are now well informed about TFAs. New labelling regulations from August 2006 under the Mercosur Trade Agreement covering Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina require the content of TFAs to be stated on the labels of packed foodstuffs.

At the time of writing, Flora Dánica is still the only company in Argentina making margarines, shortenings and other products free of trans fatty acids. The trans-free margarines fit in with Flora Dánica’s aim to produce healthy, nutritious margarines.

In 2006 Flora Dánica has also introduced two new ranges of shortenings for industrial customers: Danlow, with up to 10% TFAs, and Danova, with zero TFAs.

Carlos García (left) and Mercedes Larrain of Flora Dánica with Luis Alessandro of Novozymes. An immobilised lipase from Novozymes is used at the Llavallol plant near Buenos Aires, where Carlos is Production Manager and Mercedes is Research Manager.

First in the world
The margarines and shortenings are made with a blend of interesterified and non-interesterified oils. Interesterification changes the melting profile of blends of oils and fats to give them the desired solid fat content and melting point characteristics for table margarines and shortenings.

To perform the interesterification, the Novozymes enzyme Lipozyme® TL IM is used. In July 2004 Flora Dánica began testing this enzyme on a laboratory scale. Then they scaled up to a medium-sized pilot plant with a Plug & Play reactor with a capacity of 100 kg of enzymes. Just one year later they began running the first industrial enzymatic interesterification plant in Latin America and the first such plant in the world to be sold by Desmet Ballestra, a well-known international supplier to the oils and fats industry. The plant has four 100 kg enzyme reactors in series, giving a capacity to produce 20 tons of interester­ified fats per day. The enzyme is immobilised and packed into the reactor. The reactors work continuously 24 hours a day and each enzyme bed lasts about one month before the activity becomes low and the enzymes need changing.

Desmet Ballestra has an agreement with Novozymes to jointly promote this new technology. They supply the engin­eering know-how and equipment, while Novozymes supplies the enzymes.

“This has been a real joint development based on close technical cooperation. Flora Dánica was very quick to implement the new technology and it took just a year to go from lab-scale to full-scale production,” says Luis Alessandro, who was closely involved as Novozymes’ sales coordin­ator for the oils and fats industry in Latin America. He sees Flora Dánica as “the reference” for enzymatic interesterification, not just for Latin America, but for the rest of the world.

Reducing risks
One of the special features of the four reactors is that the incoming oils and fats come into contact with the oldest bed of enzymes first. In this way, the first reactor acts as a protective barrier.

Flora Dánica refines 200 tons of raw vegetable oil per day on-site to remove impurities. The purity of the oil has a distinct impact on yields from the enzyme reactors. By removing substances such as peroxides, yields from the reactors increase by up to 20%.

“The process has been working very smoothly. Our operators had no difficulty in learning how to use enzymes and manage the plant,” says Carlos García, the Production Manager at Flora Dánica’s Llavallol plant in Buenos Aires, where margarines are produced.

“The process has been working very smoothly,” says Carlos García, the Production Manager at Flora Dánica’s Llavallol plant in Buenos Aires, pictured beside the series of four enzyme reactors.

Better than chemicals
Flora Dánica previously made margarines from oils processed in the traditional way by partial hydrogenation. When they were planning to produce trans-free fats, they decided to switch to the interesterification process because using fully hydrogenated fats is not an option. These fats do not melt in the mouth and must therefore be blended with liquid oils and then interester­ified. Flora Dánica had the choice between chemical and enzymatic interesterification. Both methods were assessed in the labor­atory.

The main advantages of the enzymatic process are a mild temperature, no neutralisation or bleaching is needed, no liquid effluents are generated, and the enzymes are safer to handle than very reactive and unstable chemicals.

The enzymatic process takes place at
70°C, whereas chemical interesterification requires a temperature of 110°C and the reaction releases even more heat. At such a high temperature, the oil becomes coloured and a bleaching step is required. Sodium soaps are also produced, requiring a water wash of the oil, which leads to wastewater and loss of oil. All this can be avoided. No waste products are produced apart from the enzymes themselves, which are proteins and therefore biological. Flora Dánica disposes of the waste enzymes along with other by-products by incineration.

Better taste
In consumer trials conducted by Flora Dánica, consumer panels found that the new margarines made by enzymatic interesterification actually tasted better and “fresher” than Flora Dánica’s previous range of margarines.

“The enzymatic process is best not only for the consumer, but also for us in terms of ecological impact, safety and a clean process,” says Mercedes Larrain of Flora Dánica.

An Argentine favourite
The latest innovation from Flora Dánica is fresh pastry sheets for empanadas. This favourite food has traditionally been prep-ared with bovine tallow-based margarine
or with margarines based on partially hydrogenated oils. Flora Dánica’s new product, called Tapas de Empanadas, is a puff pastry made using margarine based on enzymatically interesterified trans-free vegetable oils. Another new product was launched in June 2006 - trans-free spreads with salty flavours (Dánica Dorada Saborizadas).

The company has plans to expand the interesterification plant by adding a further four reactors to double the capacity. They anticipate that sales of their newly launched Danlow and Danova industrial shortenings will increase.

The success of Flora Dánica shows that enzymatic interesterification is a compet-itive and clean technology for manufacturers of margarines and shortenings. Flora Dánica made a sales success of the fact that they were first in the Argentine market with trans-free margarines.