The Market Potential of a Grape Pomace Microemulsion

Canada’s food waste reached $31 billion in 2014. 95% of this waste ended up in landfills across the country, being a severe burden both economically and environmentally. By implementing sustainable agriculture projects, alternative uses can be found for food waste that produce positive income for companies, and alleviate stresses on the environment. Grape pomace, a food waste produced through the process of wine-making, currently ends up in landfills after wine-production. However, this agricultural by-product holds great market potential for the production of chemical microemulsions. These microemulsion systems show great potential in the food, pharmaceutical and cosmeceutical industries. The market potential was calculated by determining the volume of grape seed oil that could be extracted from grape pomace. The current market value of microemulsion surfactants were then obtained and a value was calculated based on the oil yield. Grape pomace microemulsions had the highest market potential as pharmaceutical raw ingredients, followed respectively by food additive and cosmeceutical raw ingredients. The purpose of this paper is to measure the market potential for grape pomace microemulsions in each of these industries and to provoke further investigations into the production of value added products from agricultural waste.