Food Waste as New Revenue Stream: Business Management Association Advises on Opportunities
Thailand's Business Management Association says food producers can generate new revenue by converting waste—which can comprise up to 50% of raw materials—into high-value products like supplements and cosmetics using powder engineering techn
Food waste can generate value, according to the Thai Business Management Association, which views it not merely as waste reduction but as transforming surplus into new income. In every food industry production process, what many consider "food waste" can comprise up to half of all raw materials, yet it is rarely fully utilized.
The TMA Agri-Food Community, under the Thai Business Management Association (TMA), recognized hidden opportunities and organized the Agri-Food Forward Meetup #2: Waste to Value through Powder Engineering to explore the potential of excess resources from production processes. Rather than viewing these as mere disposal burdens, they can be transformed into "new revenue sources" if the right technology and perspective are applied. Tri Rat Tuksoskul, Managing Director of T.S.K. Engineering Company and founder of Powder Technical Center ASEAN (PTC ASEAN), shared insights from over 20 years of experience developing industrial-scale production systems.
Currently, the food industry's waste-to-value approach reveals substantial untapped resources. By-products average 50%, with seafood processing industries producing 30-70% waste and fruit processing generating 50-60% waste from pomace and seeds. However, most of these by-products are currently used for low-value applications such as animal feed or fertilizer, despite significant potential for value-added development.
Powder Engineering technology plays a crucial role in transforming by-products into high-value items through converting both solids and liquids into powder form with particle design and spherical shapes, making them easy to dissolve, store longer, and ready for immediate use.
By-product challenges such as rapid spoilage, short shelf life, and difficult liquid waste treatment can be developed into diverse industrial applications including food, health, cosmetics, and advanced materials, increasing product quality several-fold. Real examples include fish bones—converted from cheap fish meal for animal feed into bio-calcium supplements for humans or natural hydroxyapatite for medical-grade bone implants and dental implants worth millions of baht per kilogram; agricultural waste or vegetable scraps—transformed into functional fiber or prebiotics for health supplements and beverages; eggshells—previously discarded as fertilizer or animal feed, now processed by extracting the inner membrane containing collagen and protein related to joints and skin, spray-dried into powder, while the shell is roasted to produce bio-calcium for human supplements, calcium drinks, pharmaceuticals, drug carriers, and cosmetics; and tuna cooking water—formerly used as animal feed but now converted into flavor and concentrated nutrients through spray drying into ready-to-use powder or fish-flavoring compounds for animal feed.
Transforming by-products into higher-value goods (Waste to Value) not only reduces industrial waste but also opens new opportunities.
