Inaugurating the sixth edition of Food Ingredients (Fi) India 2011, a 2 day exhibition & conference on the food ingredients and food processing industry, Satej Patil, State Minister for Home, Rural Development and Food & Drug Administration, Maharashtra commented,
“The recently amended Food Safety Act brings into focus again, how vital, a role the food ingredients industry would play in establishing safety standards. The Government of Maharashtra would do its utmost to provide a level playing field for companies in this sector and would also create a conducive business environment to attract foreign investments. India’s total processing strength of it produce is expected to reach 35% of the total produce by 2025.”
India’s food ingredients market
Valued at $470 million in 2007, India’s food ingredients market is today expanding at a 9% growth rate year-on-year, well above the 56% global average. “The factors aiding this remarkable shift are changing lifestyle and eating habits, increased per capita income and increasing nutritional awareness, which has led to the demand of healthy, nutritious, and cost effective convenience foods,” said Sanjeev Khaira, MD, UBM India, the organizer of the conference.
Four half-day conference seminars discussed critical issues in the Indian food and beverage processing industry, with sessions covering innovations in bakery, dairy, ingredients, health & wellness.
With over 120 exhibitors showcasing ingredients for food & beverages, food & dietary supplements, functional foods, health foods, nutraceuticals, natural foods and organic foods, nearly 4,500 industry visitors from USA, Singapore, UAE, Australia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Dubai, Taiwan, Korea, Italy, Belgium and France attended the event. Fi India 2011 featured two specialised pavilions on China & the nutraceutical sector at the exhibition.
Nutraceuticals
The nutraceuticals pavilion constituted functional food ingredients & nutraceutical products. Currently, the domestic market for nutraceuticals is around Rs.4,400 crore, which is just 0.9% of the total global business in the category. However, the total market size in India is still very small compared to the global market, but there is a huge potential for these products.
There are certain issues such as lack of awareness and no regulations, which need to be sorted out and if these issues are sorted out, the total market for these products in India can go up to Rs.17,000 crore in the next four years.
In a bid to tap the US$1-billion nutraceutical market in India, Novastell, a France based company and Piramal Healthcare Ltd, have entered the nutraceutical segment and launched various key nutraceuticals at Fi India 2011. Novastell recently started its operation in India, with its first Indian subsidiary located at Indore, the soyabean city of India.
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The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) recently concluded the BIO India International Conference held in Hyderabad. The event brought together biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry leaders and featured apart from panel sessions, one-on-one partnering, company presentations and exhibiting opportunities.
With increasing costs of drug discovery, research partnerships with the multinational companies are the way forward for Indian pharmaceutical companies, said Glenn Saldanha, Chairman and Managing Director, Glenmark Pharmaceutical Ltd.
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LANXESS inaugurated its new production plant for membrane filtration elements in Bitterfeld, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany recently. The facility is additionally equipped with laboratories, logistics areas and offices in order to deliver ready-to-use elements for reverse osmosis (RO) purposes to customers worldwide.
 After completion of extensive pilot and development phases regular production is expected to commence shortly in Bitterfeld. The first RO membrane elements will be available in the market by the beginning of 2012. The product line of membrane filtration elements will be marketed under the brand name Lewabrane. With this new facility LANXESS will increase its product portfolio for the water treatment with expertise and products for both ion exchange and membrane filtration, namely the Lewatit and Lewabrane product lines.
In order to allow customers to make optimum use of the new LANXESS RO membrane filtration devices, the company will provide custom engineering design software to optimize the performance of the Lewabrane membrane system.
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Dow Chemical Company recently introduced Dow powerhouse solar shingles that is a roofing product that protects a home and creates power using built-in solar cells in the United States.
Chief Executive Officer Andrew N. Liveris said that the solar shingle is “integral to Dow’s transformation, and a key part of its strategy to invent and innovate new technologies.”
 “It is also clear that the continued success of the global solar industry will require the kind of technical excellence, market insight, ease of adoption and manufacturing know-how that is embedded in the Dow Powerhouse product and at the core of Dow’s strengths,” Liveris said in a statement.
“The specific cost of the Powerhouse Solar Shingles will vary from home to home and will depend on a number of factors including location and orientation of the home, energy output objectives and more,” said Kasey Anderson, a Dow spokeswoman.
Liveris has called the solar shingle a game changer that will address an estimated $5 billion market by 2015. In 2009, Time magazine named the solar shingles as one of the top 50 inventions of the year. The solar shingles are currently being manufactured at a pilot plant in Midland while a brand new manufacturing facility is built on Poseyville Road near Smithfield Park. The new plant is expected to begin production in 2012.
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The Munich-based WACKER Group presented its 2011 WACKER Silicone Award including 10,000 euros prize money to Dr. Matthias Dress, Professor of Organometallic and Inorganic Chemistry at the Technische Universität Berlin.
 According to Dr Rudolf Staudigl, President & CEO of Wacker Chemie AG, Prof. Driess won the award due to his pioneering work on low-valent silicon compounds, which – owing to their isolability and reactivity properties – now constitute promising building blocks in organosilicon chemistry and make it possible, for example, to produce catalysts which do not contain precious metals. Along with the Kipping Award, the WACKER Silicone Award is the most prestigious international honor in silicon chemistry.
WACKER’s President & CEO characterized the capability of these silylenes to activate poorly reactive bonds of small molecules such as oxygen, nitrous oxide or carbon dioxide as particularly interesting. “This opens the door to utilizing silicon compounds as precious-metal-free catalysts in the future”, Dr. Staudigl said.
Matthias Driess was born in Eisenach, East Germany in 1961. He studied chemistry at the University of Heidelberg in West Germany and in 1988 obtained his doctorate in the lab group of Prof. Walter Siebert. Thereafter he spent a year in Madison, Wisconsin (USA), as a postdoc under the tutelage of Prof. Robert West – who received the WACKER Silicone Award that same year – Prof Driess received his habilitation in 1993 with his postdoctoral thesis “Silicon and Phosphorus in Unusual Coordination”. Three years later, he was appointed to the chair of Inorganic Chemistry at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Prof. Driess has been professor of Organometallic and Inorganic Chemistry at the Technical University of Berlin since July 2004.
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Wacker Chemie AG has begun polycrystalline silicon production at its Nünchritz site, which became part of the Wacker Group in 1998. First deposition reactors at the new production complex have already ramped up production of high-quality polysilicon for sale. The full nominal capacity of some 15,000 metric tons annually is expected to be operational in the second quarter of 2012. The start of production is three months earlier than Wacker’s very ambitious original timetable. All in all, Wacker has invested about €900 million in these new production facilities — creating more than 500 new jobs as a result.
Wacker targets to produce more than 33,000 metric tons of hyperpure polycrystalline silicon in 2011 — making it one of the largest manufacturers in the world. Wacker is strenghtening its position as a leading manufacturer of high-quality semiconductor silicon and solar silicon with its new production complex at Nünchritz and the polysilicon site currently under construction in Charleston (Tennessee, USA).
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One of the world’s most revered process safety experts Trevor Kletz has cited industry’s ‘macho culture’ as one of the main causes of recent accidents
Kletz says that whilst there has been no deliberate decision to spend less on safety, many senior managers have taken their eye off the ball and that a macho approach to ‘get stuck in’ has been the underlying cause of recent incidents. Kletz continues, “Many workers don’t see the need to follow all the rules or the permit-to-work procedures. Our job, they say, is to get stuck in and get the job done, not fill in forms. In time this macho approach becomes the local custom and practice.”
His comments were shared with an audience of 250 chemical and process engineers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at the Hazards Asia Pacific process safety conference, organized by the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) UK and the Chemical Industries Council of Malaysia (CICM).
But Kletz warns, “It’s easy to point the finger at the management and assume that a culture of cutting corners started at the top. It is worth remembering that the same culture can also originate at the bottom, driven by the desire to get the job done. The task of management is to know this and make sure it’s done properly.”
Kletz, a Fellow of IChemE, was unable to attend the event in person and his written remarks were delivered by IChemE director of policy and communication, Andrew Furlong.
Chemical Industries Council of Malaysia (CICM) chairman Dr Abd Hapiz during the conference said, “Chemicals are used everywhere, if chemicals are not used or produced in the right way, the industry itself will be subjected to negative publicity and scrutiny by the public as well as other stakeholder”. He said proper safety measures should be implemented to prevent any unfavourable incidents that would cost a company unnecessary losses and also put the industry and economy at large in jeopardy.
The event saw 30 technical speakers from from Malaysia, Estonia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Norway, Singapore, Switzerland, Vietnam, the UK, and the US share their views on the key issues related to the theme ‘Economic growth and the process safety challenge’. The event was attended by delegates from 20 countries.
At the close of the conference, Paul Ellis, chair of the Hazards AP organising committee said, “The objective was to make the Asia Pacific region more aware of the effects of industry on its workforce and the environment. It is now up to all of us as professionals and members of the chemical industry in the Asia Pacific region and outside of it to make improvements and spread the word.”
“Process safety management is not just a management system but an integral part of a successful business. It is a way of life,” he concluded.
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W subsidiary of Foster Wheeler’s Global Engineering and Construction Group, Foster Wheeler Energy Ltd (FWEL) has won the Five Star Health and Safety Management System Audit Award from the British Safety Council for the performance of FWEL’s UK-headquartered operation in Reading.
 “The British Safety Council Audit, encompassing the management of health and safety through to the implementation of associated systems in the workplace, results in an overall numerical score, or star rating, of the organization’s performance. Organizations are rated from one to five, five being the top rating - to indicate the effectiveness of their health and safety programs. FWEL’s Reading operation achieved a five-star rating, with a world-class audit score of 93%.
“I am proud to see that the British Safety Council has recognized our commitment to health and safety,” said Umberto della Sala, Chief Operating Officer of Foster Wheeler AG. “The British Safety Council rightly focuses on not only systems and performance but on an organization’s commitment to continuous improvement - a commitment that is shared by everyone at Foster Wheeler - senior management and staff alike.”
The internationally recognized British Safety Council Five Star Audit is used by organizations worldwide to benchmark their health and safety management system against health and safety best practice. Foster Wheeler AG is a global engineering and construction contractor and power equipment supplier.
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An Angry Bird in the Sky
 Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Or is it superman? Did you get it right the first time? Did you spot the bird in the sky? The European Southern Observatory (ESO) recently released an image of the Lambda Centauri nebula, a cloud of glowing hydrogen and newborn stars in the constellation Centaurus. The nebula is sometimes nicknamed the Running Chicken nebula, from a bird-like shape some people see in its brightest region. If you are able to locate where the chicken or Angry Bird outline lies in the nebula, then submit your version on ESO’s Flickr photo collection www.flickr.com/groups/ youresopictures/pool/group for a chance to win some interesting prizes. Happy bird spotting!!!
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