New krill player, Olympic Seafood-owned Rimfrost is the commercial partner in the 3-year project and its research director, Dr Inge Bruheim told us it would deliver its first findings at a lipids convention in Copenhagen in November.
“We have found some new compounds,” Dr Bruheim said, with details on what they might be to come at the conference.
He said the project had been motivated by random market testing that revealed great variance in the quality of samples regarding oxidation. He said one prominent brand had tested poorly on oxidation.
Testing
A reappraisal of oxidisation testing methods was also on the agenda. In an earlier statement Dr Bruheim said: “The problem is that the methods developed for assessing oxidation in marine oils (such as fish oil) do not work for krill oil. For example, we see that peroxide value does not increase in krill oil despite the fact the oil has exposed to air for a long period of time.”
The project also seeks to develop quality control and documentation systems for the manufacturing process.
“Our efforts will help standardise the methods for evaluating phospholipid bound omega-3 fatty acid quality, which is important for customers so they get piece of mind their products are of the highest quality,” said Dr Bruheim.
The other parties involved are the Technical University of Denmark and researcher, Nofima.
Rimfrost launched its krill collection of powders, meals and oils at Vitafoods Europe in Geneva in May. It claimed on-the-spot harvesting on Olympic’s boat ‘Juvel’ could deliver high-purity oils that were price-competitive with other offerings on the market.