Scientists use bioprocessing to make high value ingredients from organic waste

12 May 2026 - As the regulatory costs of dumping waste have increased, researchers are finding new ways to reuse it instead – and increasingly extracting highly valuable ingredients.

Bioplastics, enzymes, cellulose, nutritional ingredients, cosmetic ingredients, tissue repair dressings, cancer treatment products, fertiliser, fish and animal food, biofuels, and textile materials are among the many products now being developed from organic waste through emerging bioprocessing technologies.

During a recent visit to Riddet Institute, Distinguished Professor Colin Barrow delivered a presentation highlighting the rapid global advances in food valorisation – the process of transforming food waste into valuable products – and circular bioeconomy research.

Dist. Prof Barrow is Director of the Centre for Sustainable Bioproducts at Deakin University, Melbourne. He is internationally recognised for his work in developing functional ingredients from renewable resources using bioprocessing techniques.

He noted that nearly one third of food and agricultural by-products are currently wasted globally, but this is changing rapidly as regulatory pressure, sustainability goals, and technological innovation drive new approaches to resource recovery and value creation.

“One person’s waste is another person’s valuable material,” he said, explaining that food valorisation is becoming an increasingly important component of future manufacturing systems.

He said research efforts towards a circular economy are accelerating worldwide, with universities and industry partners now building pilot and commercial-scale facilities to translate laboratory discoveries into scalable manufacturing platforms.

Dist. Prof Barrow said the Australian innovation landscape had shifted significantly in recent years as rising waste disposal costs encouraged industries to explore new value-added uses for agricultural and food processing residues. An example of a next-generation bio-industry was the transformation of salmon skin into high-value collagen products for nutraceuticals and specialised wound-healing applications in medicine.

He said Australia was also moving towards sovereign processing, trying to make more of its own resources instead of importing products. Food and other agricultural waste could be made into urea fertiliser, which meant less had to be imported into the country from Russia or Ukraine.  

The Riddet Institute’s Professor Munish Puri said Dist. Prof Barrow’s presentation strongly aligned with the emerging research capabilities being developed in New Zealand by the Riddet Institute. Prof Puri is the Riddet-BSI Chair in Alternative Proteins.

At the Riddet Institute Prof Puri is establishing integrated bioprocessing platforms to convert bioresources and underutilised biomass into high-value proteins, functional ingredients, and other bioactives.

Prof Puri said the visit highlighted exciting opportunities for future collaboration in alternative proteins and sustainable biomanufacturing between the research groups at Deakin University and the Riddet Institute.

“The convergence of these research areas represents a major opportunity for New Zealand and Australia to strengthen their position in the emerging global bioeconomy – transforming primary sector side streams into high-value, export-focused products while supporting sustainability, circular manufacturing, and resilient food systems for the future.”