29-05-2013, 04:54 PM
Fermentation Economics
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The objective of any successful fermenttaion process is the ability to
produce a fermentation product. Thus the product must be sold to
recover all the costs along with desired profit. But manufacturing
should be done in accordance with the market demand. So there could
be 2 possibilities:
First possibilty is : That the market for so called product already exist
because the same or similar product has previously been sold by
others.
Second possibilty is : a newly manufactured or discovered product e.g.
a new antibiotic will require a market to be established.
This might include the approval by FDA ( food and drug
adminstration)
There are certain obstacles regarding the marketing of a certain
product like the semand of the product is low or it has relatively very
few uses.so its quite obvious that for a product lke this it could be
challenging to get patent coverage because of lack of utility.
for the products which are already in the market , there could be a
fierce competition. so to succed in the competition the product must
be cheap enough that it can be sold at or slightly less than the already
existing selling price. So, in the nutshell, the whole fermentation
process and its product must be able to compete on an economically
sound basis with the similar products in the market.
The economic position of a fermentation product is closely tied to the
costs associated with its production and distribution. These costs can
be categorised into several classes as follows:
Media components:
The competitive postion and expected profits from a fermentation
product are closely tied to the costs of the various components of the
production medium. usually inoculum medium is less expensive
because it is required to provide rapid cell growth only and not for
converting large amount of carbon substarte into a fermentation
product. However any medium component may be subject to
fluctuations in context to availabilty and costs. so it is always
advantageous to have a alternative medium for use if any unusual
situation happens.
Labor Costs:
labor costs involve technical ad non technical trained personnel at all
levels of competence. This includes handling of cultures, inoculum,
production, product recovery and purification, packaging, cleaning
and adminstartion and so forth. Labor costs vary from fermentation to
fermentation.
Contamination and sterlization:
Contamination always add costs to any fermentation process. most
fermentations cannot survive serious conmtaminations so the medium
must be discardedmodertae fermentations does not require the medium
to be discarded but it might affect the yields. Certain fermentations are
more prone to contamination than others. This involves cases in which
foaming is a problem. some are more sensitive to phage infections like
bacterial fermentations. So there has to be an alternate method for the
contaminant growth. Such methods include low pH of the medium,
partial heat treatment of the medium and inclusion of certain
chemicals so a sto retad contaminant growth.
Product Purity:
At one end of the scale some products, like antibiotic preprations must
be sterile and free from pyrogens. In contrast other antibiotic
preprations are sold in crude form for mixture with animal feeds. Thus
the purity level required for the marketing of a fermentation product
has a major effect on the costs associated with the product.Specific
fermentation products can also be marketed at more than one
concentartion as level of purity. For example, lactic acid is sold at
strengths ranging from approx 20 - 85% and its purity levels range
from crude technical grade to high purity edible and U.s.P. grades.
Each of these grades of lactic acid has a place on the market.
Waste Disposal:
Costs attributed to waste disposal vary from minimal to maximal
factor in fermentation process. A critical consideration is the
acceptance of waste by Municipal's STW (Sewage Treatment Works);
as they might want pre treatment of wastes before the acceptance. In
the altter case the fermentation company must have its own waste
treatment plant. Disposal of wastes is no longer simple in contrsat to
historical disposal in the rivers, streams or other water bodies. Certain
fermentations require the waste to be sterlized before disposal.
Research Costs:
Fermentation process must include those expenses incurred in the
research that actually discovered the process nad developed it. These
costs can be considerable for those fermentations where they provide
new products .there are less tangible research costs that must also be
considered in the overall cost of fermentation. This type of reserach is
pursued in teh hope that teh resulting basic information obtained on
the growth and synthetic activities of microbes will be of later value in
defining areas of exploration and approaches for discovering new
fermentation processed and bettering old processes.
An appraisal of the economic potential is required for the fermentation
process which evaluate all the above categories under present and
future market protential. but evaluation must be made as early as
possible during process development. Also process must be evaluated
at later stages during actual production. It is also important to consider
present and future costs and a selling price for the product that market
can bear.. All these points must be evaluated and then decide whether
the fermentation product can be sold at an acceptable level of profit or
not? If the decisons are negative then the alternatives are to abandon
the whole process and carry out further reesarch on the product
recovery.