Novonesis opened the doors of its Innovation and Technology Center in Istanbul to the media. The press meeting demonstrated that biosolutions are no longer discussed solely in the context of sustainability; they are increasingly becoming part of the industry’s agenda for raw material efficiency, product standardization, cost management and food loss reduction. Following the event, which BBM Magazine attended, we also toured the laboratories where bakery and pasta applications are developed and tested. Work on managing variations in wheat quality, extending freshness in bread and improving the quality of pasta made from bread wheat points to the growing role biotechnology could play across grain-based industries.

Pınar Tunçkol

The fundamental question facing the food industry is changing. It is no longer simply, “How can we produce more?” Increasingly, the question is: “How can we extract more consistent value from the raw materials already available to us?”

Climate change, fluctuations in wheat quality, rising energy and raw material costs, higher quality expectations in export markets and food losses are forcing manufacturers to solve the cost, quality and sustainability equation simultaneously.

This was also the central message of the press meeting held by Novonesis in Istanbul on October 27: less loss, more efficient use of resources and greater added value from the same raw material.

Hosted by Pınar Tunçkol, Country Manager of Novonesis Türkiye, the meeting also brought together managers from different business units, who provided insights into the company’s work across their respective fields.

Biosolutions use biological processes involving enzymes, microorganisms, selected cultures and fermentation to improve products and production processes. One point particularly emphasized during the meeting was that these technologies should not be regarded as an alternative designed to replace conventional production altogether. Rather, they should be seen as tools that can help make existing systems more efficient.

Global science, local application

Novonesis was formed following the 2024 merger of Novozymes and Chr. Hansen, bringing together two established biotechnology companies under a global biosolutions platform. Its history in Türkiye dates back to 1982. Today, the company applies enzymes, microorganisms and fermentation technologies across more than 30 industries, ranging from food and agriculture to energy and industrial production.

One of the key elements of its Turkish operations is the Innovation and Technology Center in Istanbul. Here, global R&D expertise is tested against local raw materials, local production conditions and the practical challenges faced by manufacturers.

The working model described during the presentations became much more tangible during our laboratory tour. The process begins by listening to the manufacturer and identifying the problem. R&D capabilities at the company’s global headquarters are then combined with the expertise of local application laboratories in Türkiye. Solutions are developed and tested, and once the desired results have been verified, they are scaled up.

For Novonesis, one of the key concepts in this process is repeatability. A successful laboratory trial alone is not enough; the same performance needs to be achievable consistently under industrial production conditions.

This approach is particularly relevant to the flour milling, bakery and pasta industries covered by BBM Magazine. In all three sectors, variation in raw material characteristics remains one of the biggest challenges to maintaining standardized production.

Managing the process against variable wheat quality

One of the key topics raised during the Q&A session was wheat quality and protein requirements in Türkiye.

In previous years, blending imported wheat with different quality and protein characteristics with domestic wheat was one of the tools available to millers seeking to achieve specific flour specifications. Changes in import conditions, however, are making the more efficient utilization of domestic wheat increasingly important.

Novonesis representatives said they did not agree with the view that Turkish wheat is categorically inferior in quality to Russian wheat. They pointed out that Russia’s price advantage is significantly related to its production scale.

According to the company, appropriately blending domestic wheats with different characteristics and supporting them with enzyme technologies could create new opportunities to produce more cost-effective flour while achieving targeted performance.

An important distinction needs to be made here: enzyme technology does not replace the protein in wheat with additional protein. Its value lies instead in helping manufacturers better manage the functional properties of the raw material during processing.

For millers and bakers, this represents a different way of looking at raw material variability. If variation cannot be eliminated completely, the process itself needs to become more resilient to that variation.

Standardization and freshness in the bakery laboratory

The bakery application facilities visited by BBM Magazine offered an opportunity to see how the biotechnology discussed during the presentations translates into actual production applications.

The work carried out here is not simply about producing “better bread.” Dough behavior, processing tolerance, final product structure and, particularly, freshness retention are evaluated together.

After bread is baked, changes in starch structure and moisture distribution contribute to progressive firming over time. Appropriate enzyme technologies can help slow some of these changes, supporting the retention of softness and freshness. Recipe and process optimization can also contribute to managing production losses.

The economic implications are significant.

In industrial baking, shelf life is not simply a question of how many days consumers can enjoy fresh bread. The journey from the distribution center to the supermarket shelf, the time spent on the shelf, returns of unsold products and their eventual conversion into food waste are all part of the same equation.

Maintaining freshness can therefore mean fewer returns for manufacturers, more efficient inventory management for retailers and acceptable product quality for consumers over a longer period.

However, another important point emphasized during the meeting was that technology alone cannot solve food waste. Unless production planning, logistics, retail management and consumer behavior are addressed together, extending shelf life alone cannot eliminate systemic waste.

The critical question in the pasta laboratory: bread wheat

For BBM Magazine, one of the most striking parts of the visit was the pasta application work.

Türkiye is one of the world’s major pasta producers and exporters, and price competition is particularly intense in Africa, the Middle East and a number of other developing markets. In some export markets, this makes pasta production based on bread or soft wheat economically relevant alongside traditional durum wheat and semolina.

Yet the cost advantage comes with a technical challenge: How can the targeted pasta quality be maintained when bread wheat is used?

One of the questions we raised during the press meeting focused directly on this issue.

Novonesis representatives noted that Türkiye exports pasta across a broad geography, particularly to Africa and the Middle East, and that quality challenges associated with the use of soft or bread wheat are among the important issues facing the industry.

The company said its work is specifically focused on improving quality under these conditions and that it has developed solutions addressing the needs of Türkiye’s major pasta exporters. Similar work is also being carried out in markets such as Egypt and Nigeria.

More importantly, Novonesis said it recently launched a new solution aimed at enabling the more efficient use of bread wheat in pasta production.

For the pasta industry, this development should not be viewed merely as another ingredient innovation.

A new equation in pasta production: raw material flexibility

Durum wheat and semolina remain the fundamental raw materials for traditional high-quality pasta. Durum wheat’s protein structure, gluten characteristics, yellow pigments and cooking performance give pasta many of its characteristic properties.

However, not every product in the global market is sold within the same price segment. In some markets, price is the consumer’s primary consideration. Manufacturers therefore need greater flexibility in their choice of raw materials.

The opportunity biotechnology creates here is not about turning a lower-quality raw material into “high-quality durum wheat.” Rather, it is about controlling, as far as technically possible, the losses in process and final-product performance when different raw materials are used.

That distinction is important.

In the pasta plants of the future, competitive advantage may come not only from purchasing the highest-quality raw material, but also from the ability to manufacture consistent products from different raw material profiles.

For a country such as Türkiye, which has a major export volume and supplies products across a wide range of price segments, this capability could become strategically important.

From laboratory to factory

One of the clearest messages from the Novonesis visit was that biotechnology is no longer a field confined to laboratory-scale science.

Within the company’s working model, the laboratory becomes a small-scale simulation environment for industrial production. The technical and economic requirement is identified, a control sample is established, the biological solution is applied, results are compared and the process moves toward production scale only after repeatable results have been achieved.

Laboratory and field trials, systematic recording of results and validation at industrial scale are therefore fundamental elements of the approach.

For this reason, what stood out during our laboratory visit was not simply the equipment we saw, but the methodology behind it:

Define the problem, measure, compare, validate and then scale up.

This is likely to be one of the principles shaping the future of biosolutions in the food industry. For manufacturers, the key question comes before any broad sustainability claim and is much more practical: “Does this technology work in my factory?”

Will biology completely replace chemistry?

This was also one of the important discussions during the Q&A session.

Novonesis does not position biosolutions as a 100% replacement for chemical applications. In some applications, completely eliminating chemical inputs may not be technically possible.

For example, it was explained that biological solutions may not fully replace the effectiveness of chemical pesticides against certain plant pathogens. Instead, integrated models could reduce chemical inputs while supplementing them with biological solutions.

A similar principle applies in animal production, where probiotic and microbial approaches may help reduce the need for antibiotics but cannot replace necessary medical treatment when disease occurs.

This distinction matters for the industry. Rather than framing the debate as “biology versus chemistry,” it may be more realistic to regard biosolutions as new tools for achieving targeted industrial performance with more efficient use of resources.

Does Novonesis sell directly to bakers?

The meeting also clarified the company’s business model.

In bakery, Novonesis operates predominantly through a B2B model. Rather than selling directly to the final baker, the company works with formulators that combine different raw materials and technologies to develop solutions. These companies then tailor their offerings to the requirements of flour millers and bakers.

In other words, Novonesis positions itself not merely as an ingredient supplier, but as a technology and solution platform that manufacturers and formulators can turn to when they encounter a new product or process challenge.

As company representatives explained during the Q&A session, Novonesis may not sell a finished solution directly to a bakery, but it aims to be one of the partners that companies supplying bakery solutions work with when developing new technologies.

The rising cost of food loss

Another major factor driving the growing importance of biotechnology is food loss and waste.

According to FAO data cited during the meeting, 13.3% of food globally was lost between post-harvest and retail stages in 2023. UNEP figures, which cover different stages and use a different methodology, show that 1.05 billion tonnes of food were wasted at retail, food-service and household levels in 2022.

The problem therefore goes far beyond bread discarded by consumers.

It extends across the entire value chain, from losses in the field and inefficiencies at the mill to production failures, distribution returns and products reaching the end of their shelf life at retail.

From this perspective, a few additional days of freshness in bread or greater flexibility in raw material use for pasta is no longer simply a product-quality issue. It also becomes a tool for resource efficiency and cost management.

A €10.8 billion opportunity for Türkiye

The report The Value of Biosolutions: Growth and Prosperity Towards 2035 – Türkiye Edition, presented during the meeting, also highlighted the economic dimension of this transformation.

According to the study prepared by Amsterdam Data Collective (ADC) for Novonesis, the current economic footprint of the biosolutions sector in Türkiye stands at approximately €4 billion. Of this, €1.8 billion represents direct economic output, while €2.2 billion comes from indirect contributions through related value chains. The sector is estimated to support around 28,000 jobs.

Under the report’s high-growth scenario, with the right policy and investment environment in place, the total output value of biosolutions in Türkiye could exceed €10.8 billion by 2035, while employment supported by the sector could surpass 75,000 jobs. These figures are projections based on specific policy and investment assumptions, rather than guaranteed outcomes.

At the global level, the same study projects that, under favorable conditions, the biosolutions sector could exceed €877 billion in output and support more than five million jobs by 2035.

Biotechnology is becoming part of raw material management

Our visit to Novonesis showed that biotechnology is beginning to move beyond its traditional position as an auxiliary ingredient topic in bakery and pasta production and is increasingly becoming part of the raw material management toolbox.

Raw material variability is likely to be one of the biggest challenges facing grain-based industries in the coming years. Climate change means that even wheat sourced from the same region can vary from one year to another in protein, gluten, enzyme activity and other quality parameters. When price volatility and differing quality requirements across export markets are added to the equation, relying solely on a strategy of “buying good wheat” becomes increasingly difficult.

The new equation is different:

How can I consistently produce the product I need from the wheat available to me?

In bakery, enzymes that support dough performance, freshness and process tolerance are one technological response. In pasta, work aimed at limiting quality losses when alternative raw materials such as bread wheat are used addresses the same fundamental challenge from another direction.

This is particularly important for Türkiye. The country is not only a major flour and pasta producer, but also a strong exporter serving international markets across very different price and quality segments. Raw material flexibility could therefore become one of the factors determining the international competitiveness of Turkish manufacturers in the years ahead.

The work we observed in the Istanbul laboratories also provides an indication of where the industry is heading. In the bakery and pasta factories of the future, quality will not be determined solely by machinery, recipes or raw materials. Machine technology, process expertise, data, raw material science and biotechnology will increasingly work together.

The bread and pasta trials we observed at Novonesis’ Istanbul center should therefore not be viewed simply as laboratory experiments testing new enzymes.

The more significant development is that biology is becoming a direct part of production engineering.

And in a world where the quality, cost and availability of grain are becoming increasingly variable, this approach is likely to play a much greater role in the competitive landscape of the flour milling, bakery and pasta industries in the years ahead.