If a cereal product claims to have a certain amount of dietary fibre how do you know it is really in there? If you are a brewer making beer how do you iron out differences in starch levels between one sack of grain and the next?
Being able to measure levels of various substances in the foods and drinks we enjoy is the home turf of Megazyme International. The Bray-based company has clients all around the world who rely on the testing systems it develops to ensure product content and consistency.
Brewer Carlsberg uses Megazyme test kits to measure starch and sugar levels as it brews, along with measuring another four or five substances. Closer to home Kerry Group tests its products and ingredients using Megazyme kits to measure various sugars, enzymes and other substances to ensure a high quality product.
Analytics kits
"We develop analytical methodology which we sell in kit form," says Dr Barry McCleary, the company's founder and chief executive. If the test kit doesn't exist then Megazyme will make one.
“We are leaders in the measurement of dietary fibre and our methods are near standard in many countries,” he says. “It is our flagship range of products and is based on the measurement of enzymes.”
McCleary hails from Australia and opened the company in Sydney in 1988. Eight years later he decided to move the company to Ireland, setting up in a 930sq m (10,000sq ft) unit in Bray, Co Wicklow, and there has been continuous demand ever since for the company’s products .
“We now employ 50 and we have grown really well over the last few years.” The company managed to buck the recession, clocking up an average 12 per cent growth per year during the dark years.
Scientists and organic chemists
McCleary puts this down to hiring some of the world’s best scientists and organic chemists who worked with McCleary’s original discoveries to invent new testing methods.
Of the 50 staff 32 are scientists and seven hold PhDs, he says. It also comes down to a steady stream of clients from a very wide range of food and beverage sectors who need to be able to validate their products as safe and consistent.
The company developed ways to measure enzymes and carbohydrates for the wine industry. In fact the company can test for 32 different substances in a bottle of wine.
“With wine it is mainly sugars, organic acids like acetic acid, things that affect the taste of the wine,” says McCleary.
Brewers need to measure the breakdown of starch into the sugars that in turn are broken down into alcohol by yeasts. Bakers are also interested in tests that let them know starch content of flour and the level of damage done to it during production processes.
The dairy industry measures a range of substances including lactose. “In China that [lactose testing] is our best-selling product,” he says.
The test kit delivers an answer in a number of ways: for example, a colour change, an alteration in gravity or changing in ultraviolet output. More elaborate technologies can also be used, such as mass chromatography.
When Megazyme tests for fibre content in a cereal product this includes a battery of tests. It tells the producer the amount of insoluble fibre, large-molecule soluble fibre and small-molecule soluble fibre in a given sample.
Biofuel industry
Megazyme has moved to produce kits for other industries, notably the biofuel production industry. It has a new test kit for measuring a key enzyme involved in the breakdown of cellulose, the major target for ethanol-based biofuel production.
The company will revolutionise enzyme analysis in the biofuels research area, says McCleary. It is also targeting the animal feeds industry, biological detergents and pulp bio-bleaching.
“A lot of the benefit is helping other industries be more efficient and that is why they keep buying our products,” he says. “Ultimately we have to convert what we do into cash to keep everyone employed.”
He and his tech managers attend several conferences a year to present papers or to meet and greet on a company stand.
“But we also want to see what others are doing. We get ideas that way,” he says.
“A lot of the problems don’t change, but sometimes the technology changes to provide a solution.”
Business must be good, because the company invested in a 1,500sq m (16,000sq ft) extension to their Bray headquarters in 2005. And in 2012 McCleary decided to add a dedicated organic chemistry group to look at new products.
One new area Megazyme is studying is the breakdown of the sugars found in seaweed.
