Press Releases

Roquette: A new way of exploring microalgae

Wednesday, 16 June, 2010

Origin?	Appeared on Earth some 3 billion years ago First use dated back 2000 years to the Chinese
What are they?	An extremely diverse group of microorganisms at the origin of the life At least 30,000 species known from fresh or marine water, of which 100 are studied and only around 10 exploited
What about nutrition?	Original and alternative source of many essential nutrients: proteins, lipids, vitamins, pigments.
And sustainability?	At the origin of the food chain An alternative raw material to marine resources

Inspired by this promising portrait and faithful to its avowed aim of sustainable innovation, the ROQUETTE group took up the challenge of creating an industry devoted to microalgae. The objective is simple: explore this resource, only recently re-discovered, from biodiversity to extraction of compounds of interest via process optimisation. To ensure the success of this large-scale project, ROQUETTE brings together diverse and complementary skills: production, analytics, nutrition, R&D, regulation but also marketing and sales force.

Faced with the desire of populations to preserve their health through the different stages in life and the nutritional priorities of companies, ROQUETTE hopes to offer ingredients or innovative biomass produced by the microalgae industry for the Nutrition and Health fields. These natural and sustainable compounds would be included in the composition of dietary supplements or functional foods.

As evidence of its commitment to this new way, ROQUETTE proposes the first of many ingredients: Chlorella. It is one of the most important species in the microalgal industry. This success is mainly due to its extraordinary complete composition (proteins, vitamins, pigments such as lutein, lipids etc.). Nowadays, the most common way of consuming Chlorella is as a dietary supplement. Indeed, whether in powder or tablet form, this microalga delivers all its nutritional benefits to consumers.

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