January/February Issue

The year 2002 which has just departed beyond the horizon was nothing if not eventful - some would say apocalyptic - for the fermentation, biotechnology, and food ingredient industries. Acquisitions, mergers - both mega and minor - and spin-offs, have left the bystander, if not the players themselves, reeling. In pharmaceuticals none of the old-style companies who were involved in pharmaceuticals as well as chemicals and food ingredients, have survived intact. This has all gone.

Virtually every pharmaceutical company, large or small, has shed its chemical activities resulting in new speciality chemical companies such as Rhodia, [from Aventis], ICI [from Astra-Zeneca], Roche Vitamins [from Roche] and Novartis Nutrition [from Novartis], Syngenta [from Aventis and Schering]. .

But the survival of these mega pharma groups is conditional on the quality of their research pipelines yielding novel products which may inherit the void left by products whose patents have already or will soon expire. The new speciality chemical companies are becoming involved in pharmaceutical intermediates, food ingredients and more recently ingredients for the nutraceutical sector.

The common interest of both pharmaceuticals and speciality chemicals companies are fermentation and biotechnology processes. Novel pharma products likely to be commercialised by 2010 involve at least one biotechnology stage [see our latest survey 'The Fermentation and Biotechnology Industries - Current Capacity and Capacity Requirements']. There is keen interest in fermentation processes for food ingredients [see our latest survey 'Industrial Enzymes for Starch, Dairy Detergents, Textiles, Baking and Foods - Current Status and Outlook']. Many pharmaceutical intermediates are based on chiral technology [see our latest survey 'Chiral Compounds for Biotechnology - Production Costs, Economics and Technology'

The nutraceutical sector is interesting due to the broad range of products based on fermentation processesas can be seen in various new surveys

• w-3 & w-6 PUFAs
• b-Glucans as Dietary Supplements
• S-Adenosylmethionine
• l-Carnitine
• Probiotics and Starter Cultures
• b-Carotene and other Carotenoids