Cape Town resident Roy Henderson (48) says he realised the importance of being able to buy nutritionally valuable food when the 2008 recession hit South Africa.

“It soon became apparent that purse strings were tight and high-quality food was becoming almost unaffordable. I knew, intrinsically, that there had to be a way to change the antiquated way we manufacture food to give everyone, at all income levels, meaningful nutrition and also put the waste stream generated by food manufacturers to better use,” he explains.

As a result, Henderson, along with his business partner, Jan Vlok, developed the DCD technology suited to pulping; making purees, juices, powders, sauces and banting premixes; blending products, manufacturing nut/seed butters and milks, and breaking up raw material, where required.

Simply put, the technology, in an exceptionally short space of time and small area, accelerates biomass volume, using speeds in excess of 500 km/h, after which it is rapidly slowed down. It is at this point that the Disruptor breaks open the cell structures and releases the cell contents, Henderson notes.

“This is the reason we eat in the first place – to obtain the goodness from within the cell structures. In opening up everything that is available, we can use all the insoluble fibre because it is reduced to sub 150 µm and we increase the volume that is bio-available, which then allows the consumer to have less food but with more nutrition.”

Born in Wynberg, Cape Town, Henderson grew up in a middle-class family with his sister, noting that food was something he “did three times a day”.

“We didn’t worry about nutrition in those days because what we bought in the shop, cooked and ate was vastly different to what we consume today,” he recalls.

But his father saw the value in food. Henderson had a naval career in mind; however, his father advised him in his Grade 11 year to look into food farming or manufacturing because “people always had to eat”.

His father, who was in the navy, passed away shortly after Henderson turned 17 and, wanting to be closer to his father, he opted for a naval career instead. “To lose a father figure is arguably the worst thing for a young man,” he says.

After graduating from Fish Hoek High School, he undertook his military studies in the South African Navy and completed a general MBA towards the end of his 21 years in the navy.

“I was a combat officer and followed a career at sea, which resulted in command of two mine countermeasure vessels. I specialised in naval diving and underwater explosives (which stood me in good stead to develop the DCD technology) and also had command of the naval diving unit,” Henderson notes.

He believes his naval career and that of an officer equipped him to do just about anything. “If one is on a ship at sea and presented with a challenge, you cannot run off and seek help, you need to learn to deal with it and be self-disciplined and self-reliant – qualities required when one becomes an entrepreneur.”

In the navy, food was always of a high quality and being an active naval officer “promoted hunger”, he comments. He quips that this contrasts to the early days of his starting his own business; Henderson and his wife had a year where their food choices were limited and, therefore, there “are one or two vegetables that are definitely not a first choice”.

Henderson took early retirement, but remains a commander (retired), from the navy as the seagoing part of his career had ended and he did not believe that he would be happy “driving a desk full time”.

Subsequently, he dabbled in property and consulting work, which led to meeting Vlok. Together they established Green Cell Technologies and developed the DCD technology, which is commercially available after eight years of research and development (R&D) and engineering.

“At the moment, we are focused on supplying the technology to food manufacturers, but we can also target pharmaceuticals, cosmoceuticals and nutriceuticals players, biofuels and the agricultural industry,” Henderson points out.

The technology was conceived in 2007/8 when Henderson was involved in a project that was attempting to extract antioxidants from orange-skin waste. “These extractions with proven clini- cal properties were intended for use in the augmentation of food for miners with HIV/Aids in an attempt to manage their immune compromised systems.”

The machinery has been purpose-built (but based on pretty much standard food manufacturing equipment), incorporating, among others, electric pumps, hydraulics and electronics; but the proprietary part within this is how the material is arranged to exit the machinery.

The machinery is able to reduce waste related to food manufacturing by 100%. “Further, if the manufacturer wishes to fractionate the insoluble fibre, then it can be used as a fibre augmentation to other foods or returned to the field as a soil enhancer that will improve water retention and, in so doing, improve crop/hectare conversion. However the Disruptors can also be used for processing meat products,” Henderson says, noting that, in South Africa, a minimum of ten-billion kilograms of food waste is produced in a year.

He says, if we could use this waste and put it back into the food production chain, and if each South African ate about one kilogram a day, then it could feed about 27-million people a year.

In fact, Green Cell Technologies has formulated an emulsion called Nourish SuperFoods, a puree that consists of cheap ingredients that could use current products that are waste. Henderson notes that this puree is able to provide any person with 100% and more of their recommended daily allowance for all nutrition and will probably cost about R3 a day per person, while generating no waste stream.

“We have about seven-billion people on this planet, marching rapidly towards nine-billion, with arguably less arable land available to feed the world, given the way we have abused it with chemicals, or water issues. It is still incumbent that we feed people and if we cannot make better use of the raw materials we have, we cannot feed people.”

For example, just about every soup, sauce or powder used today contains butternut. When it is prepared using current manufacturing protocols, about 40% of the material, in the form of the skins and seeds, is removed upfront and, therefore, wasted, fed to cattle or pigs, or sent to landfill.

The Distruptor enables all the available material to be used.

“Incidentally, larger manufacturers, and only because they have the R&D budget, spend millions each year to see how they can beneficiate their waste; in some cases, they do find a use, but that excludes the vast majority of the smaller and medium-sized manufacturers who cannot do this.”

But why create waste in the first place?

“If we DCD butternut, we just about double the yield and improve nutrition because, as a rule of thumb, skins and seeds are more nutritious.”

This has an economic benefit in the value chain and, as such, meaningful food can be provided for the consumer at a price that is acceptable to all parts of the value chain, while reducing damage to the environment.

A South African company has adopted the DCD technology for small-scale manufacture, with Green Cell Technologies having acquired shares in this company to help it deliver on its potential, notes Henderson.

“We have several interested parties in South Africa that are evaluating [the acquisition of the technology] and are subject to nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) at this point. We also have many US- and European Union-based companies that are evaluating the technology. We have invoiced a number of them in the last month and are about to go into production.

“The parties concerned range from a start-up juicing business to a large-scale global enterprise,” he adds.

“The results speak for themselves and there are many high potential offers/partnerships and collaborations in the pipeline, ranging from food and beverage to even biofuels,” Henderson says, noting that a key aspect that impresses everyone is that DCD enables food manufacturing methods that were previously not possible.

But it has not been an easy road for Green Cell Technologies.

The food manufacturing industry has not really changed much since the industrial revolution, with the exception of automation. It is largely the same, just shinier, Henderson points out.

DCD is a “quantum leap and a paradigm shift” for not only manufacturers but also retailers and the end-users, he says. Therefore, trying to convince the food manufacturing industry to adopt the technology has been “a labour of love that is, thankfully, now starting to bear fruit”.

Self-belief is vital. “You need to hang in there during many dark days and lean months and have the courage to know that what you are doing is right and can benefit everyone on the planet.”

But perhaps the hardest thing Henderson has had to do is to turn down a substantial offer for the business about two years ago.

“At that stage, we were not in commercial production and funds were tight.” Nonetheless, Green Cell Technologies stood fast, declining the offer, as the offshore purchasers were not a fit for the company’s philosophy or ideology to make its technology available to everyone to benefit the planet as a whole.