Announcing ICC Brazil yeast partnership

We are pleased to announce that Lallemand Animal Nutrition (LAN) has entered into a long term global partnership with ICC Brazil for the research, development and supply of inactive yeast products and fractions derived from sugar cane ethanol.

About ICC

ICC was founded in 1992 and specializes in the production and supply, to animal nutrition and pet-food customers, of secondary yeast derivatives from ethanol, including yeast cell walls, inactive dry yeast, autolyzed and mineral yeasts. It is headquartered in Sao Paulo, Brazil. (www.iccbrazil.com) with production facilities in the port of Santos and in Macatuba (SP).

Brazil is one of the leading countries for ethanol production. The fermentation of sugar cane molasses or juices generate large quantities of spent yeast co-products that can be harvested and dried. Over recent years, LAN has developed a unique expertise in the qualification of the chemical and physical structure of yeast cell wall, introducing new tools such as Atomic Force Microscopy and in-vitro models to measure the binding capacities (against pathogens and/or toxins) and immune modulation effects of such products. In parallel, Lallemand  has been working hard on the selection of specific yeast strains that offer very unique properties whilst producing high yields of ethanol. These new research programs have identified new properties and benefits for end users from ethanol based yeast co-products, leading ICC and LAN to enter into collaborative discussions. These discussions have resulted in the decision to formalize a partnership which will further develop ICC’s upstream expertise and LAN’s technology leadership by undertaking joint research & development work on yeast cell wall and derivatives.

The new partnership will secure a dedicated supply from ICC‘s contracted sugar/ethanol mills of characterized yeast cell wall products and yeast derivatives, which will be marketed by LAN under its brands to its customers. The value of yeast cell walls are well demonstrated and widely accepted by the animal nutrition marketplace. However, there is still further work to do to identify and select new strains with higher and more consistent performance effects on a number of species. Both ICC and LAN strongly believe that yeast can become a reliable and original source of alternative protein at a time when sustainability has become a major concern for the animal production industry, especially in aquaculture. Within the partnership  arrangements, Lallemand Group will bring its knowledge and expertise around yeast selection and production, LAN will use its R&D capabilities to further deploy its discoveries in term of yeast downstream modification using specific and new enzymes blends applied on specific strains in dedicated plants. ICC will provide its knowhow and expertise in the ethanol yeast production based on over 25 years of successful offtake from its network of  Brazilian sugar mills.

The LAN and ICC commercial networks will remain sperate and ICC will continue to sell its full range of existing products to its customers through its offices in Brazil, Europe, USA, Asia and South America.

LAN President Yannig Le Treut said,

“I’m very pleased to annouce that ICC and Lallemand Animal Nutrition have now entered into a long term supply and R&D partnership, aiming at offering to the Animal production, Pet food and Aquaculture industries significant volumes of selected ethanol based yeast products, produced by specific strains under specific down stream processes that can maximize the well known functional properties of yeast cell walls. We also believe that specific autolysis conditions can add value to the protein part of particular Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains and this is of great importance for our industry at a time when we are all looking for better quality proteins with functional roles for young animals, aquaculture and companion animals. Brazil offers almost untapped quantites of high quality secondary yeast that could for example, play a significant role in partly replacing fishmeal. We all know that sustainability and wild catch reduction is on the agenda of all the serious professional players and LAN and ICC wish to develop new products that can combine amino-acids as well as nucleotides and vitamins.

We believe that the new investigation tools, the models that LAN has developed over recent years (leading for example to the launch of YANG, a unique combination of three different Saccharomyces and non-Saccharomyces strains) will soon allow us to enlarge our range of yeast derivatives offered to the marketplace. We intend to ensure these are affordable, well qualified and  consistent products targeted for  specific effects such as mycotoxin binding,  controlled immune modulation, amino-acids supply, palatability and feed-intake enhancers. We fully recognize the expertise that ICC has built as a reliable and long term partner with many of the key players in Brazil. I’m sure that our collaboration with ICC will succesfully help LAN to meet the increasing market demand for well characterized and selected yeast derivatives.

Both the ICC and the LAN commercial network will remain separate and the two businesses will continue to provide their own full range of commercial products with well differentiated technologies and brands.”