According to News24, a South African company that has developed a new method for purifying milk has been hailed as “most likely to succeed” at the recent Industrial Energy Efficiency Accelerator (IEEA) conference in the United Kingdom.

The company, SurePure has developed a technique which employs ultraviolet light to achieve pasteurisation instead of the traditional heat based method.

The new technique has been lauded as being safe and more cost effective than that of previous technologies.

Stephen Miller, managing director of SurePure told News24 that, "There are no consumer negatives using photopurification because nothing is added to the liquid (like preservatives are) and nothing is taken out (like filtration does), and the bio-chemistry of the liquid is not effected like heat-treatment does, this is one of the safest purification processes that can be used."

The technology, which took R100 million and a decade to come to fruition, was highlighted at the IEEA conference, which explored ways to increase energy efficiency in the dairy production process.

While there have been some South African adopters of the technology, there has been a larger interest in Europe and the United States.

According to Miller the technology could also be applied to other areas. “We have an innovative calf-milk purification system commercially available, are working to keep the enzymes intact in animal blood plasma, and are even in trials to see whether the technology could be used to purify human breast milk to feed to premature infants”, he said.