Guangdong Tianyi Biotechnology Co., Ltd.

Guangdong Tianyi Biotechnology Co., Ltd. specialises in monascus, the fermented red yeast rice used as a natural colour and as a functional ingredient. The business was registered in December 2004 as Dongguan Tianyi Bioengineering Co., Ltd. In July 2011 production was moved to Suixi County in Zhanjiang, Guangdong, and the present company was formed there. An office remains in Dongguan.

The Suixi site covers 65 mu and has around 35,000 square metres of buildings, including production areas, offices and a wastewater treatment station. Equipment includes 60 cubic metre automated fermenters and integrated separation, extraction, concentration, drying and packing lines. Stated capacity is 1,200 tonnes a year of powdered monascus red and yellow pigments, monascus rice and powder, functional monascus rice and monascus mycelium, plus 1,000 tonnes a year of compounded natural colours. The company holds ISO22000 food safety certification and kosher certification.

Research covers strain isolation and screening, liquid and solid state fermentation, and mechanised solid state koji making. Early work on citrinin-free monascus pigment won a Dongguan science and technology award in 2008, and the company led the effort that brought a citrinin limit into the national standard for monascus red, which took effect in January 2017. It was recognised as a Guangdong provincial enterprise technology centre in 2017 and as the provincial engineering technology research centre for microbially fermented monascus pigment the same year. It holds six granted invention patents and thirteen utility model patents, employs a research team of more than sixty, and completed a national key R&D programme project on green manufacturing of monascus red in 2021. A consumer brand, Quyouyou, was launched in 2020.