KernCraft
Up to now fruitstones occur as residual-material in high amounts in the fruit-processing industry in Austria and the neighbouring countries. In the production of jam, squish, compote, brandy, liqueur and juice more than 550.000 mt fruitstones per year in the EU are not valorized, although they could serve as an excellent source to produce different high-quality products. Mostly fruitstones are dumped to rot where they decay without further value-adding – in the best case they are incinerated under sub-optimal conditions. Very few products from fruitstones are available in Austria, but they are imported from abroad; valorization of our native resources does not exist at all. The main reason for the wasting of this precious bio-ressources is the lack of knowledge about processing technology (breaking of stones, separation of hard shell and soft kernel, etc).
Rotting plum-stones treated as „waste“
Delicate oils - edible and for cosmetics
Two preceding projects supported by the governmental Program on Technologies for Sustainable Development „Factory of Tomorrow“ (NAWARO CASCADING and NAWARO CASCADING PILOT in lab-scale) and accomplished by alchemia-nova focused on the characterization of fruit stone material and possible ways to gain value-added products. Existing technology has to be adapted gradually in order to overcome possible stumbling blocks. We discovered that it was not possible to upscale processing techniques from laboratory- to an economic scale. A pilot research unit is needed to devise industrial scale processing technology.
KernWert Research Factory in Güssing, Austria, (a pilot plant in which we are stakeholders) will offer the possibility to acquire know-how of the processing parameters of cleaning, drying, breaking and separation in stone-fruit processing. Moreover, new resources – other stones and kernels discarded as „waste“ by the food-processing industry, will be investigated at the Research Factory, to create innovative products by means of bio-cascading. This way „waste“ or by-products are upgraded to value-added goods.
In Dezember of 2007 alchemia-nova and Prof. Hanswerner Mackwitz were awarded the highest Austrian Sustainability Award (ÖGUT Umweltpreis) in the category of Renewable Ressources and ressource-efficient Production Processes for this project (see below).
