Aquapharm have found bacteria that
produce colours!
These colours are called carotenoids.
All you have to do to get the carotenoids from the bugs is keep 'em happy and treat 'em right. Give them the right amount of light, air and food and Voila! Aquapharm are just the people to find out how exactly the bacteria can be persuaded to produce the most and the best colour, and when to 'harvest' the colour from the bugs.
And because they are colours from natural source they can be used in food – much better than putting nasty chemical dyes and un-natural colours in your food, so food companies will buy this product.
Here's some foody money facts.
The market (that's business speak for 'how much of one thing, say colours for food, is bought by all the customers all over the world – this is normally expressed in money terms £££££s!). For example, the market for colours for food is worth, get this, 240 million £££££s!. So if Aquapharm get 0.5 % of this market they stand to make…do the maths…yes that's right:
1.2 million pounds.
That is well worth being nice to bacteria for!
