Plant protein manufacturer Burcon NutraScience has signed on to draft a license agreement for agrifood firm Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) to market its soy protein products.
The Vancouver company on Monday said it has signed a non-binding letter of intent laying out its and ADM’s plans for a license agreement, under which Burcon would license its Clarisoy technology exclusively to ADM to produce, sell and market soy protein isolates.
As per the letter of intent, a deal, if reached, would license all Burcon’s Clarisoy-related know-how and trade secrets to ADM for the products’ manufacture and use.
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Illinois-based ADM would also commit in the near term to engineering and design work on a Clarisoy production plant, and to pay Burcon a quarterly percentage of net revenues as royalties.
The proposed royalty structure, Burcon said, would give ADM “financial incentive” to expand Clarisoy sales globally, offering a stepped-down royalty rate if ADM takes the product to markets beyond North America.
The letter of intent, which expires March 1, 2011, also commits Burcon not to shop the technology around to any other company while it negotiates a deal with ADM.
“As a leader in the global food ingredient industry, and one of the world’s pre-eminent producers of soy proteins, ADM is the perfect partner” to commercialize Clarisoy, Burcon president Johann Tergesen said Monday in the company’s release.
“We believe Clarisoy’s potential in the global protein ingredient industry will be well served through the license structure as contemplated in the letter of intent we have executed with ADM today.”
“All these claims”
Burcon’s Clarisoy protein isolate is billed as 100 per cent soluble, transparent and low in viscosity in acidic beverages. Its use would allow beverage makers to produce transparent protein-fortified beverages such as juices, soft drinks and sport drinks in a pH range as low as 2.5.
Clarisoy is also heat-stable in acidic beverages, Burcon said, which would allow a food processor to hot-fill with no loss of clarity or change in viscosity.
Clarisoy proteins also don’t have a “beany” taste which Burcon said is typically associated with soy protein. That alone, in turn, would open up “significant opportunities” in the existing global soy protein market, Burcon said.
Burcon has emphasized it’s “unaware of any other commercially available soy protein that can make all these claims.”
The two companies on Monday also announced a separate agreement that protects their interests regarding Burcon’s other products in development while they work on this licensing deal for Clarisoy. Burcon and ADM have had a broader development agreement in place since 2003.
Burcon, which maintains lab and technical facilities in Winnipeg, is also developing a pair of canola protein isolates, Puratein and Supertein, sporting “unique functional and nutritional attributes.”
However, Burcon and ADM said Monday, “the two parties have chosen to focus on commercializing Clarisoy with its excellent nutritional and functional properties and unlike canola protein, soy protein has global regulatory approval for use in food and nutritional products already in place.”
