Current Status of Chemical and Enzymatic Interesterification for Commodity Oils and Specialty Fats

Fats are normally processed to have a wide range of physico-chemical properties enabling their use in most formulations ; several technologies including fractionation, interesterification and hydrogenation allow the refiner to supply tailor made products which will meet requirements of the food manufacturers. The presentation will focus on the interesterification process that can be carried out chemically or enzymatically for commodity oils, and enzymatically for specialty fats. Whatever the option, the basic principle of interesterification is to modify, selectively or not, the position of fatty acids on the glycerol backbone. In previous years, chemical interesterification was principally used for the elaboration of commodity products while enzymatic interesterification was reserved to the production of specialty fats; today, enzymatic interesterification is becoming a cost effective process for commodity fats and in parallel is intensively developed for the elaboration of structured lipids.