No. 127: Euglena enjoys growing demand in Japan (August 9, 2010)

Euglena enjoys growing demand recently in Japan, though it is a microorganism unfamiliar to people in general. A venture company that researches and markets euglenas was founded under the leadership of Tokyo university students. This company named Euglena developed the technology of mass culture for euglena in 2005. Euglena snack that the company launched last November sparked a boom. It is priced at 450 yen per box, and more than 26,000 boxes were sold. It contains more than 200 million euglenas apiece. Because euglenas contain such nutritional elements as vitamin and mineral, many companies started to use euglenas as a raw material of nutritional foods and cosmetics. The market of euglena-related products is estimated to reach 5 billion yen this year. Euglenas seem very promising as a raw material of biofuel for aircraft because the culture process of euglenas gets in lots of carbon dioxide.