Yota Bio-engineering Co., Ltd.

Yota Bio-engineering Co., Ltd., which trades as YotaBio, has produced biological food additives at 398 Huai'an Road, Rizhao, a coastal city in Shandong province, since September 2016. The manufacturing site covers about 38,000 square metres and 85 staff work there year-round.

The original products were nisin, natamycin and transglutaminase, made by fermentation. The range has since been extended into the Yota-Guard line of clean-label preservatives, which are fermentates rather than isolated chemicals: cultured dextrose and cultured sugar fermented with Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis, cultured wheat flour and cultured whey fermented with Propionibacterium freudenreichii, and a dry vinegar powder carrying 5 to 7 percent free acetic acid. These are used to replace sorbates and benzoates in bakery, cheese, dressings, condiments, dips, spreads and meat.

The R&D centre occupies 3,000 square metres of land and is headed by Dr Orlando Borras Hidalgo, a full-time foreign biotechnology specialist. More than 20 research staff work there, including two foreign academicians, fourteen senior and middle-level professionals and sixteen with master's degrees or above, covering microbiology, biotechnology, biochemical engineering and chemical analysis. A separate food application test department runs spoilage microbiology work for customers and trials enzyme preparations against customer formulations. The company is certified to ISO 9001 and ISO 22000, holds Kosher and Halal certification, and is a member of the China Food Additives and Ingredients Association.