Palacios, EVERY Partner to Make Products Using Animal-Free Eggs
Grupo Empresarial Palacios Alimentación – the world’s largest producer of string chorizo and Spanish omelets and Spain’s leading producer of frozen desserts – has formalized a commercial agreement with The EVERY Company, a trailblazer in crafting highly functional ingredients without the use of animals.
This partnership marks a significant milestone for the food industry as Palacios will incorporate EVERY Egg, the world’s first chicken egg created without hens, into its flagship Spanish omelets and into the research and development of new products.
EVERY Egg made its prestigious debut at the 3-Michelin-Star restaurant, Eleven Madison Park, where its exceptional quality and versatility were showcased across a variety of dishes. From the delicate textures of a French omelet and the rich depths of a crème brûlée to the intricate layers of a chawanmushi and the innovative twist in a foaming cocktail, EVERY Egg has proven its culinary prowess, mirroring the traditional hen egg in both taste and functionality.
Palacios — which began as a local butcher shop in Albelda de Iregua, La Rioja, Spain before transforming itself into the world’s leading producer of Spanish omelets — has been on the forefront of integrating breakthrough innovations into traditional recipes. Palacios has a firm commitment to innovation, and proof of this is the start of this joint collaboration: quality, tradition and innovation go hand in hand.
“We were genuinely amazed by the delicious taste and culinary versatility of EVERY Egg,” the company says. “Its ability to seamlessly blend into a wide range of dishes while maintaining the authentic taste and texture of a high-quality hen egg is remarkable.”
With EVERY Egg, food companies finally have access to a guaranteed safe, reliable and humane egg source.
The partnership between EVERY and Palacios is a pioneering alliance that promises to revolutionize the food industry, bringing better ingredients to traditional dishes and introducing new culinary experiences for chefs and food enthusiasts worldwide.
Grupo Palacios originated in the 1960s, when Jaime Palacios and his wife, Dolores, continued the family business of a butcher shop in Albelda de Iregua, La Rioja. The big leap for the company began in 1983, with the inauguration of its sausage factory in Albelda de Iregua.
Since 1999, the company implemented a diversification strategy by introducing other value-added food products, including fresh tortillas, refrigerated pizzas, and frozen pastries, in addition to a complete range of 100 percent plant based products. Palacios has generated a turnover of more than 380 million euros in 2023, has 11 production plants in Spain, 1 in the United Kingdom and another in the United States, and its products are distributed in more than 50 countries.
In addition, Palacios has consolidated its position as the world’s leading company in the manufacture and marketing of chorizo sarta and refrigerated potato tortillas, with a workforce of more than 1,000 employees. The company constantly seeks innovative ways to reduce its environmental impact and promote responsible practices throughout its value chain.
The EVERY Company is a leader in the food technology space and is the first company in the world to commercialize highly functional egg proteins produced without chickens. Based in Daly City, Calif., EVERY has enhanced numerous commercial categories with its game-changing proteins, including pressed juice, baked goods and beverage alcohol, with more to come. With investors including AB InBev, the world’s largest fermentation company, and Anne Hathaway, EVERY has been recognized as one of the 50 Hottest Tech Companies in the World by Crunchbase, and among the 50 NEXT companies to Disrupt the World.
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Capri Sun Debuts Multi-Serve Format for RTD Category Expansion
For years, Capri Sun fans have called for a larger serving size to enjoy even more of their childhood favorite drink. In fact, between 2020 and 2023, a staggering 76 percent of suggestions received by the Capri Sun call center were about fans wanting a bigger product size. Just in time for summer, the brand is answering this call with the launch of Capri Sun Multi-Serve, a 96-ounce bottle of Capri Sun’s top-selling Fruit Punch flavor, and the brand’s first innovation in nearly a decade.
As the brand behind the number one kids’ drink in America, Capri Sun pouches have largely been for on-the-go occasions. Now, Capri Sun Multi-Serve is bringing this fan favorite taste to everyone, particularly to the kitchen table in an additional convenient format to enjoy with families and bigger groups. Now available exclusively at BJ’s Wholesale Club, Sam’s Club and select Costco locations, Capri Sun Multi-Serve delivers great value as a convenient two-pack with 32 pouches’ worth of juice.
“With this larger format, everyone, including kids at heart, can bring a piece of their epic childhood to parties, summer gatherings and even dinnertime at home,” said Jordan Mann, senior brand manager, Capri Sun. “We’re now able to delight those fans that grew up on Capri Sun with an offering that suits their needs. They’ve outgrown the serving size of the pouch, but not their love for Capri Sun.”
The launch of Capri Sun Multi-Serve marks the brand’s expansion in the $38 billion ready-to-drink category. The latest innovation is set to drive growth for the brand, especially at a time when consumers are looking to club retailers for value by buying in bulk to accommodate many in the household.
To learn more about Capri Sun’s latest product innovation, follow @caprisun on Instagram and @caprisun_usa on TikTok.
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MSU Potato Breeder Develops Reduced Sucrose Potato
Dave Douches, professor in the Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences and director of the MSU Potato Breeding and Genetics Program.
A new genetically engineered potato developed by Michigan State University potato breeder Dave Douches has been granted exemption from the biotechnology regulations placed on genetically modified products by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
The Kal91.3 potato is bred from an MSU potato variety named Kalkaska. The newly developed potato can be stored in cool temperatures for long periods of time without sucrose, the compound that sugar is typically stored in potatoes as, converting into reducing sugars such as fructose and glucose. Without as many reducing sugars, off-color browning and caramelization can be minimized in the Kal91.3 potato, leading to healthier and higher-quality products, including potato chips.
The Kal91.3 potato can also reduce the environmental impact of the growing process without as many fertilizers and pesticides needed to maintain the potato during storage.
Sucrose is broken down in potatoes by vacuolar acid invertase, an enzyme reactive to the external environment of plants — such as temperature. Roughly 10 years ago, Jiming Jiang, an MSU Foundation Professor in the departments of Horticulture and Plant Biology, published findings on how to silence, or suppress, the gene that produces vacuolar acid invertase in potatoes.
This discovery sparked interest from Douches, a professor in the Department of Plant Soil and Microbial Sciences and director of the MSU Potato Breeding and Genetics Program, to find a way to correct the sugar imbalance that can occur in some of Michigan’s commercial chipping potatoes.
“I’ve always felt as the potato breeder at MSU that using biotechnology as a tool to improve potatoes would be worthwhile,” Douches said. “We have chipping potatoes that work well and do their job, but I wanted to take this gene and find out whether it could improve a potato that was having a problem with its sugars.
“Breeding potatoes is quite challenging because we need so many important traits to line up, but in this case, we just needed one trait to correct the problem. Using this biotech strategy, we succeeded in making a potato that was giving us problems into one that’s now commercially valuable.”
After multiple experiments carried out from 2014-2015, Douches developed an RNA interference construct that silenced vacuolar acid invertase in Kalkaska potatoes.
From 2016-2023, Douches tested the agronomic characteristics of the Kal91.3 potato and found it had a good shape, size and specific gravity — the measurement of starch content compared to water in the potato.
Historically, many farmers have stored chipping potatoes at or around 50 F to avoid vacuolar acid invertase from responding to cooler temperatures and converting sucrose into reducing sugars, but doing so has left potatoes more susceptible to storage rots and moisture loss. The Kal91.3 potato, however, has shown the ability to be stored at 40 F while maintaining its sugar balance.
“There’s a double value to it,” Douches said. “The first is that we stabilize the sugars. The invertase silencing slows down the conversion of sucrose into fructose and glucose, so it stabilizes the potato’s sugar while in storage. It’s settling the potato down from a metabolism point of view. The second is that we benefit from being able to store the potato for longer periods of time at cooler temperatures.”
In January, Douches received notice from USDA APHIS that the Kal91.3 potato proved not to pose an increased plant pest risk relative to its conventionally bred counterpart, thus making it exempt from the biotech regulations USDA APHIS imposes on other genetically modified products. This news meant regulators from USDA APHIS concluded that the Kal91.3 potato could’ve otherwise been developed using traditional breeding techniques.
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