Biocon Colors (Qingdao) Co., Ltd.

Biocon Colors (Qingdao) is the Chinese arm of BioconColors, a natural colour producer whose history goes back to 1983, when the business was set up as Biocon del Peru, a subsidiary of the Irish company Biocon Biochemicals. It passed through Quest International, part of the Unilever group, in the late 1980s, and became independent in 1993 through an acquisition by its present shareholders.

The company produces natural food colourants and colouring foodstuffs, including annatto, carmine, beetroot red, carotene, chlorophyll, turmeric and vegetable carbon black. It supplies both single-source colours and customised shades formulated for particular applications, and works as a supplier to end producers and to other colour houses. Named application areas include ice cream and frozen yogurt, isotonic sports drinks, plant-based meat analogues, where the shade has to move from raw pink-red to cooked brown, and natural and collagen sausage casings.

Raw material enrichment and quality control are done in house, and the company describes its offer as seed-to-shelf, taking responsibility for the stability and vibrancy problems that make natural colours harder to work with than synthetic ones. Customers are in more than fifty countries, spanning food, beverage, cosmetic, pharmaceutical and pet food and feed.

The Qingdao operation is at No. 427 Changjiang East Road, Huangdao District, Qingdao, Shandong. It is one of three company locations, alongside offices in Amsterdam and in Callao near Lima, Peru.