"It's cooler than space!" How BNBC turns a grain of wheat into proteins essential for humans

News of the topic There are only four biotech corporations on the planet - the largest in CHINA, one each in Japan, the usa and here in Belarus. Why so few? it is not a lack of demand for the manufactured goods, which, on the contrary, is growing exponentially all over the world, and not so much in the high cost of production, but in its highest degree of innovation. Only a few can afford to launch deep processing of wheat, in which a tiny grain, having passed through 12 factories and five technical stages integrated into one continuous industrial chain, turns into amino acids that are irreplaceable for the human and animal organisms - and we are among them. And yet, the zenith of domestic biotechnology is still ahead - there is room to grow both in volumes and in assortment. Why do feed manufacturers compare themselves to chefs? What principle of Chinese professionals did Belarusian biotechnologists take as a basis? And what will BNBC-3 produce? BELTA report from the workshops of the unique enterprise, about which the HEAD of state said: "This is cooler than space!.. The creation of BNBC is comparable to the construction of a nuclear power plant, space programs, the emergence of a high-performance IT park..." Residents of the Celestial Empire can handle such a pace: 16 plants have appeared here in three years! It seems incredible, but on an area of ​​160 hectares in the Pukhovichi District, not far from the satellite town of Rudensk, 16 high-tech plants of both agro-industrial and biotechnological profile have grown in three years. Now they produce up to 643 thousand tons of compound feed and premixes and at least 70 thousand tons of amino acids per year, completely covering the needs of the domestic market, and sending most of the products for EXPORT . And, by the way, they successfully buy abroad not only the final processed goods, that is, amino acids, but also related products, for example, wheat gluten. However, before selling the products, they need to be manufactured - BNBC employees work 12 hours a shift, maintaining a continuous industrial cycle both late at night and early in the morning. "No matter how first-class the technologies and equipment are, the result is largely due to the human factor. Just imagine: such enterprises did not exist in our country before 2022, which, however, did not prevent us from assembling a team of over 1,000 specialists in a matter of months. Now we have grown even more, we already have over 1.8 thousand employees, - says Sergey Lozhechnik, General DIRECTOR of BNBC CJSC, about personnel as one of the components of success. - Yes, we have established close contacts with many educational institutions: BSU, Polesie State University, and Molodechno State Polytechnic College, but they train professionals for the future, while we started from scratch."  Sergey Lozhechnik




And the current successes seem even more significant. What is the largest grain storage facility in the post-Soviet space worth, holding up to 448 thousand tons of grain in total! This April, an outstanding fact was recorded in the Book of Records of Belarus. For clarity, you can practice visualization by imagining that one such reservoir holds 55 railway cars loaded with grain. It is from this point that the long journey of a small grain of wheat in the large production cycle of a biotechnological corporation begins.  "Author's dishes" for productive animals from the chief biotechnologist

Despite the grandeur of the idea, the industrial processes to which it is subject are quite simple. In any case, this is what the deputy general director for production, candidate of chemical sciences Alexander Bildyukevich, is trying to convince journalists of, talking about the industrial complex of the corporation as a kind of pyramid, at the base of which lies agro-industrial production, ending with compound feed and premixes coming off the conveyor. It is less science-intensive, but larger in volume. The superstructure of the peculiar pyramid is biotechnological production, requiring much deeper processing of grain, the result of which is the production of high-margin amino acids, in the case of BNBC - L-lysine sulfate, L-lysine monohydrochloride, L-threonine and L-tryptophan. 
"We have three plants for the production of compound feed: for pigs, for cattle and poultry, for fish, including valuable species, namely salmon, trout, sturgeon. There is also a plant for the production of premixes. The production cycle is quite short in time and is tied to standard technology, - the deputy general director for production lays it out on the shelves. - Grain is fed through a conveyor from the receiving, cleaning, drying and storage complex, that is, the very notorious largest grain storage facility. Protein raw materials are also supplied. Then it is crushed, mixed, granulated and packaged depending on the format of the compound feed release in a marketable form." 
Alexander Bildyukevich
The total range of manufactured compound feeds and premixes can hardly be calculated even by the specialists themselves - there are a lot of recipes. And the whole point is that they focus on the client and are ready to prepare a "dish" for any order, and not only for cows and pigs, but also, say, for geese, turkeys, horses, sheep, camels, goats, fur animals. BNBC has such experience. If we insist on a digital expression of the range of manufactured products, we can cite about 1.5 thousand names of premixes and about 500 varieties of compound feed - and this is only in the agro-industrial group. Biotechnological production, of course, cannot boast of such a palette of goods, but even one position in its assortment is the result of at least 10 days of continuous work of 12 factories linked into one chain, and we are not even mentioning the hundreds of specialists involved in this process, using modern technologies on innovative equipment. Let's look at this mechanism from the inside. 
Premix production workshop Agricultural production workshop
Splitting grain into molecules, or the inner workings of biotechnological production
As it became clear, each plant of agro-industrial production can function separately from the others, absolutely independently, which cannot be said about the production of amino acids. Biotechnological production is a conveyor, and we are allowed to press the start button. So, the raw material from the grain storage went through the grain pipelines, now it will be in continuous ten-day movement. The first stop is the FLOUR milling production, where the wheat grains will be freed from the hard shell and ground. Next, the resulting flour must go into the "wet process", which occurs in the starch section. In general terms, here the flour is "disassembled into parts", that is, gluten, A-starch, B-starch, fibers and pentosans (polysaccharides. - Note by BELTA) are separated, and of all the listed components, only A-starch, not associated with the protein fraction, will go further along the biotechnological chain. But perhaps it is worth stopping to clarify the details. 
Starch production workshop
"Visually, our flour is no different from that sold in any store, but at the level of micron-sized particles equal to 0.001 millimeters, it is radically different," helps to delve into the nuances, Alexey Brovko, head of the starch production workshop. "If flour can be ground as much as possible for baking, then it is important for us not to destroy the starch granule, because it is impossible to produce high-quality glucose syrup, which is a nutrient medium for bacteria useful in biotechnology, from starch with protein impurities or cellulose fibers." In this case, according to the professional, the primary task is to maintain proportions, since the workers of the starch workshop, in fact, perform the same functions as confectioners - knead the dough. Conditionally, of course. The fact is that they need to achieve a certain viscosity of the substance in order to weaken the bond of A-starch granules with other substances. How the desired effect is achieved is a corporate secret. After all the processes, the dough is allowed to "mature" and sent to centrifuges, where the first separation into three fractions occurs. Each of the flour components undergoes its own production stages, as for A-starch, it undergoes several stages of purification, upon completion of which starch MILK with the required dry matter content is obtained. These are the ones that are transferred to the next section of biotechnological production - glucose. Here, A-starch is saccharified and converted into glucose syrup, which is the "food" for bacteria that produce amino acids. 

"In our workshop, by enzymatic hydrolysis from wheat starch, we produce glucose, which serves as a key ingredient for the subsequent stages of the biotechnological chain, namely, for the development of bacteria that synthesize amino acids in large volumes, - clarifies what's what, head of the glucose syrup production workshop Andrey Sinyuts. - From the acceptance of the starch suspension to filtration, processing and bringing the syrup to standard standards, it takes about 60 hours." 
Glucose production workshop
But the biotechnological production chain does not end there. After the "work" of beneficial bacteria, a liquid is obtained, which is a multi-component acid solution, that is, the amino acid we need must still be isolated, which will be preceded by a long extraction process. In general terms, it can be imagined as follows: first, the solution is purified from bacteria by filtration, after which it moves to the ion exchange stage, where the amino acid is deposited on a special resin. The appearance of the finished product - amino acids in the form of crystals - is preceded by the stages of purification and evaporation. As a result, here they are, the four essential amino acids: L-lysine sulfate, which strengthens the bones of animals and birds, increases the absorption of calcium and phosphorus, L-lysine monohydrochloride, necessary for growth and stimulation of appetite, L-threonine, which promotes muscle mass growth, and L-tryptophan, which accelerates weight gain. And in this case, having described biotechnological production in general terms, we have left out the fact that the technology for producing each of the four amino acids is not significantly, but still different. However, we will leave the details to the professionals. Lysine fermentation workshop Lysine extraction workshop
It is worth noting that the BNKB amino acid production technology is completely waste-free. The accompanying products obtained at each stage of the industrial chain, which we have traced, are packaged in separate packages and successfully sold on the market, including on the external circuit. For example, gluten, released during the decomposition of flour into components, is added to compound feed, used in baking bakery and confectionery products, in pasta and cheese production, and in pharmaceuticals. The wheat product is useful in the manufacture of feed additives for livestock, and ammonium sulfate, both in granules and in liquid form, has proven itself as an excellent fertilizer for agricultural crops. In short, the biotech corporation managed to monetize each production stage, which became possible thanks to precise scientific calculations. Sergey Vitebsky
Moreover, following the global eco-friendly principle, water that has gone through many stages of the high-tech production cycle is passed through several stages of purification, making it absolutely safe for the ecosystem. Sergey Vitebsky, head of the treatment facilities section, insists on the complete environmental friendliness of the processes, boldly adding: water that has been repeatedly filtered and freed from any impurities goes into the outside world, which can be called a striking example of the integration of production into the environment.  The BNBC-3
control and testing laboratory will expand the range of amino acids produced

It is simply impossible to launch such a large-scale biotechnological production without scientists. Scientific support for the corporation's work lies on the shoulders of the employees of its own scientific and practical center. Microbiologists work here mainly, whose main task is to maintain active strains of bacteria producing amino acids. It is also necessary to control the change of generations every two to three years. By the way, the next, fifth generation is already on the way, which means that scientists will have significantly more work to do in selecting favorable conditions for new strains.
Laboratory for the preparation of strains and R&D
"In order for the bacteria to remain alive, active and producing products, it is necessary to conduct selection - choose the best of them and prepare them for production, multiply them in special environments, and most importantly - preserve them, - explains the head of the laboratory for the preparation of strains Vyacheslav Grin'ko. - From the obtained 4 liters of material containing microorganisms, up to 500 cubic meters of lysine are formed - a unique product, which domestic enterprises recently imported, but now there is no need for it: we produce our own." Laboratory for the preparation of strains and R&D
Following the example of their Chinese colleagues, Belarusian specialists intend to bring their own biotechnologies to the top of the pyramid, which was already mentioned by Deputy Director General for Production Alexander Bildyukevich, ending at the peak with the release of amino acids of the highest degree of purification. We are talking about the planned construction of BNBC-3, where they intend to produce the three remaining essential amino acids - leucine, valine and isoleucine, as well as citric acid. However, these are tasks for the future, the corporation refrains from specifying the exact dates of construction and commissioning of the facility, specifying only that the contractor, as in the construction of the first two stages, will be a Chinese company. Laboratory for the preparation of strains and R&D The largest buyer of Belarusian amino acids is RUSSIA The corporation is waiting for the emergence of additional production capacities. One of the reasons is economic. Yes, BNBC was created as an import-substituting project and lived up to expectations, providing the domestic market with manufactured products for the full need, but in the total volume, this item of supply accounts for about 20%. The remaining 80% of amino acids are exported, of which about 60% are purchased by Russians . The goods are also shipped to Serbia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Moldova, Bulgaria, Israel, India - and the expansion of the sales geography continues. 


The second reason is the human resources potential. The biotechnological corporation has undoubtedly become a growth point in the region. Deputy General Director for ideology Ekaterina Kosmolskaya notes that the average age of BNBC employees is only 35 years. The enterprise is young, and the team is similar. Every day, workers are brought here not only from Pukhovichi, but also from Osipovichi and Chervensky districts and even from MINSK. 

"After working for just a couple of years, many of our promising employees have already grown to production managers and heads of structural divisions," the deputy general director points out. "High salaries, the opportunity for self-realization in such innovative areas as microbiology and industrial biotechnology, and in addition a significant social package, including free meals , rental housing at prices below market prices, free transportation - we provide all of the above. In particular, in the nearby village of Druzhny, we built four multi-story buildings with 230 apartments for our employees." 
Walking through the workshops, we learned that the first labor dynasties are also appearing at BNBC, and that there are not one or two, but many more young families created here in just three years of the corporation's existence. And this is further proof that life at the enterprise, the scale of which is already comparable to the scope of the country's largest machine-building giants, is in full swing. 

Vera VASILEVSKAYA,
photos by Nadezhda KOSTETSKAYA and BNBC,
BELTA