November 27, 2013

In order to improve shelf life, Izmir Pastorize Yumurta (IPAY), Turkey's largest liquid egg company, has signed a multi-year royalty commercial agreement with SurePure, a liquid photopurification company.

IPAY intends to employ SurePure's photopurification technology to improve shelf life and brand quality of its egg products, using a SurePure system in its plant. As part of the transaction, SurePure will receive approximately US$300,000 over the five year term of the agreement.

IPAY's products include whole egg, egg white and egg yolk, offering these products in bulk to industrial customers, bag-in-box for the catering trade and smaller cartons for retail. It is the only company serving the non-industrial Turkish market, where shelf-life is critical.

This application follows academic research confirming the decontamination efficiency of UV-C against the main egg contaminant Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica Ser (de Souza & Fernandez, Feb 2011). Similar studies have demonstrated that UV-C treatments do not affect  the rheological properties and the protein profile of liquid egg fractions (de Souza & Fernandez, May 2012), and other research has confirmed no adverse effects on consumer acceptance of egg products processed by UV-C, with overall appearance or taste similar to the controls processed thermally (de Souza & Fernandez, Jan 2012).