Nutraceuticals and Food Processing

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NUTRACEUTICALS & Food Processing

The term “nutraceutical” is defined as any substance that may be food or part of a food that provides medical benefits including the prevention and treatment of diseases. Nutraceuticals include isolated nutrients, dietary supplements, diets, genetically engineered designer foods, herbal products, processed products, such as cereals, soups and beverages.

Globlally nutraceutical market is growing at the rate of 7 % and the market is estimated to cross US $ 177 billion by the year 2013. The United States, Europe and Japan dominate the global market, with the combined share estimated at about 85%. The Asia-Pacific market is expected to record exceptional gains in coming years, buoyed by its rising economic prosperity especially Chinese and Indian markets. Indian nutraceutical market is estimated to be USD one billion and has been growing much faster at 18 per for the last three years, mostly driven by functional food and beverages categories. However, the latent market in India is two to four times the current market size and is between USD two to USD four billion with almost 148 million potential customers, (FICCI - Ernst & Young study titled ‘Nutraceuticals - Critical supplement for building a healthy India). The recent trend and logical progression noticed is convergence of health and food industry.

FOOD PROCESSING

India is the world’s 2nd largest producer of food. Food processing industry is one of the largest industries in India ranking 5th in terms of production, consumption, export and anticipated growth. Domestically, the spending on food and food products amounts to 21% of India’s GDP and constitutes the largest portion of the Indian consumer’s spending. With rapid expansion of the processed food industry, there is going to be a huge increase in demand for professionally skilled manpower. The Industry aims to grow at a rate of 40% of the current market size by 2015, to touch USD 258 billion by 2015.

For both the industries, the major bottleneck hampering the growth is the availability of skilled manpower in various roles within the industry. In fact, of late, shortage of skilled workers has emerged as a critical factor to achieve the projected growth targets and become globally competitive. For the want of skilled manpower, industry spends most of the time to train and equip the human resource with basic skill set, needed at various functions in the Industry. FICCI estimates show that this accounts to the total monetary loss of approx. 1 billion for food processing companies alone. This is a very alarming situation for the growth of food processing industry and needs to be addressed.

Clearly understanding the need for studying the closely related industry in a holistic and comprehensive manner, an unique Advanced Post-graduate Diploma program in Nutraceutical and Food Processing course is offered under Biotechnology Finishing School. Both being a specialized segment and highly interdisciplinary, the course content has been developed keeping in mind the industry demand with more focus on research, latest technology and innovations, cost effective technology and packaging solutions with a futuristic outlook.