After two years of review, the European Commission has granted novel food authorisation to BlackGrain from Yellow Fields, a new rapeseed-based ingredient developed by Avena Nordic Grain Plc, part of the Apetit Plc Group.

The novel ingredient is produced using oil seed cakes, which are normally used to obtain animal feed through expeller pressing, a mechanical method for extracting oil from raw materials.

Avena Nordic saw great potential in this by-product and developed a partially defatted rapeseed-based plant protein and fibre powder, with great nutritional values and many possible food applications.

"Utilizing oil seed expeller to produce food for human consumption is a responsible and sustainable choice that shortens the food supply chain,” says R&D Manager Kaisu Riihinen, who’s in charge of the ingredient development.

BlackGrain from Yellow Fields is vegan, gluten-, GMO-, and soy-free. It has a dark colour and a mild taste, it works well with grains, pea protein and starch, and is suitable for most diets.

“Receiving the novel food authorisation for BlackGrain is a seal to several years of product development. It also pushes us to continue our work in developing new rapeseed-based ingredients”, says Apetit’s CEO Esa Mäki.

Avena Nordic started to develop the ingredient in 2017 and filed the novel food authorisation request in 2018. The final approval from the European Commission arrived after EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) gave its green light to the risk-assessment.

While waiting for the approval Apetit developed BlackGrain further and will continue development into the future: “We will invest in initiating small scale production, in order to be able to test BlackGrain on a larger scale with potential clients. Additionally, we will continue to evaluate the possibilities regarding the commercializing of the ingredient”, Mäki says.

“We are developing the current BlackGrain ingredient with a customer-oriented approach. We take our customers' requirements into consideration and help them find the best way of benefitting from BlackGrain in their product,” says Riihinen.

Avena Nordic is part of Apetit, a leading Finnish manufacturer of frozen vegetables and frozen ready meals produced from mainly Finnish raw materials. The group also produces high-quality vegetable oils and rapeseed expellers for feedstuff, and trades grain on the international markets.