Corporate > History

History

Plant Lipids was started in 1979 as a company for making steam distilling essential oils mainly from spices and selling the products within India. In 1989, solvent extraction was introduced to produce both spice oils and oleoresins. From then on exports also started.

Evolution of Product Range
The main raw material processed in those days were black pepper and hot chilli followed by ginger, turmeric and celery seed. The Western consumers' increasing preference for hot taste gave encouragement for processing pepper, chilli and ginger. Turmeric oleoresin became a major natural food colour. There was no preference for the aroma of turmeric oil and this resulted in great demand for crystallised curcumin devoid of aroma as natural food colour. In the early 90's nutmeg became a major raw material with a good demand for both oil and oleoresin. Cardamom oil has a good market in India. In the mid 90's there was great requirement for Garcinia extract as a nutraceutical for weight control and slimming. But soon the fascination for this declined. Curcumin in 95% pure form, was found to have a great anti-oxidant property. Its demand increased as an anti-cancer food. But the big boost to export happened in the late 90's with the acceptance of Indian paprika oleoresin both as a natural food colour and as an ingredient of chicken feed to give the egg yolk a reddish tint. Until then, Indian paprika was seen to be too hot with higher level of capsaicin. However with successful liquid fractionation of capsaicin from colour gave a boost to Indian paprika oleoresin. The capsaicin separated comes as a by-product. Today oleoresin paprika is the biggest item of export.

Development of Markets
Since spice oils and oleoresins are used in processed foods, the purchasing power of the people is a big requisite for a good market. Understandably the early markets were in USA, West Europe, Far East and Oceania. With the dawn of the 21st century South Africa and to an extent Egypt have emerged as good markets. This period also showed emergence of South America, East Europe and South East Asia as markets of great potential.