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Matís and Mótás signed a lease agreement for the future Matís housing at Vínlandsleið 12 in Reykjavík recently. Friday, June 26th.

Steingrímur J. Sigfússon, the then Minister of Fisheries and Agriculture, decided on 24 April, after submitting the case to the Government of Iceland, that Matís ohf. will move its operations to new premises by the end of next year.

In accordance with the goal of increasing the number of jobs in the construction industry, the State Construction Agency was commissioned to advertise for rental housing for Matís ohf. which now operates in three locations across the city.

It was then decided to choose the construction company Mótás, which had offered to rent a 3,800 square meter building at Vínlandsleið 12, Reykjavík. The house, which is now fully sealed, is on three floors with a basement, and the landlord will furnish the house and return it completely finished on the outside and inside. The landlord has estimated that the manpower requirement, including derivative work to complete the building in accordance with Matís' building description, is around 200 man-years.

By Act no. 68/2006 on the establishment of Matvælarannsóknir hf. authorized the Althingi to establish a limited company for the operation of the Fisheries Research Institute, Matvælarannsóknir Keldnaholt, cf. a co-operation agreement between the Institute of Technology and the Agricultural University, and the laboratory of the Environment Institute. In the comments on the bill, great emphasis was placed on enabling the company to merge under one roof the activities of the institutions that were being merged.

The company - Matís ohf. - entered into force on 1 January 2007.

Attached are photos from the signature, where you can see members of Matís' board, Matís' CEO and Mótás' managing director signing the agreement.

A major milestone was reached in April when Katrín Hauksdóttir at Matís in Akureyri increased the number of measurements in the field of pesticides from 49 to 62, but pesticides are used in the production of fruit and vegetables to prevent the invasion of insects and other pests.

This is a quarter increase which is a milestone that required a lot of work. This year, the number of substances measured using an accredited method was also increased by 12 and now 27 of these 62 substances are screened for accreditation. Materials added are:
Asefat
Bitertanol
Fenarimol
Fention
Fipronil
Fosmet
Methiocarb
Myclobutanil
Pirimicarb
Pyridaben
Pyrimethanil
Tebuconazole
Tetradifon

The aim is to apply for accreditation for more materials as circumstances allow. The materials added to the accreditation are as follows:
Vinklosolin
Metalaxyl
Malation
Aldrin
Isofenfos
Metadion
Buprofezin
Bromopropylate
Carbofuran
Ditalimfos
Lindan
Cyprodinil

Following this increase, Iceland is closer to meeting EU requirements for pesticide screening in domestic and imported vegetables and fruit. This greatly increases the safety of general consumers and a feather in Matís' cap.

The steering group of the Nordic Council of Ministers on "New Nordic Foods" recently nominated Brynhildi Pálsdóttir for an award in the field of "New Nordic Foods".

Brynhildur and Guðfinna Mjöll Magnúsdóttir and their company Borðið, were nominated from Iceland.

Brynhildur has worked for Matís for a while and has been involved in the "Meeting of farmers and designers".

"Strategy of farmers and designers" is an entrepreneurial project for the benefit of the economy, where two professions are brought together to create a unique product. Great opportunities lie in food production, and with targeted innovation of raw materials, the added value can be multiplied. There is great value in uniqueness and experience, so the aim of the project is to develop regional food products based on the highest quality, traceability and cultural appeal.

Matís has taken an active part in the above projects and is involved in product development.

Further information:
The table (large pdf file)
The table - CV (pdf file)

Matís ohf. recently started work on a large Nordic project, e-REK (e-TRACE), which works with research companies in Norway and Sweden.

The project is for two years and the main goal is to define, develop and implement traceability systems where food safety information is integrated with other real-time traceability information. The main purpose of such a system is to ensure complete traceability and at the same time increase product safety.

The partners of this project have recently developed a system that can ensure product traceability and this system is based on a standard from EPCGlobal and is based on RFID (Radio Frequency IDentificaton) technology.

Matís will be responsible for developing and adapting the traceability system to the typical process of marine products from processing to distributors, as well as defining the safety aspects that are important in such a system. Project manager Matís ohf. in this project is Sveinn Margeirsson, sveinn.margeirsson@matis.is.

An agreement on the establishment and operation of Matvælamiðstöð Austurlands will be signed today at the dairy in Egilsstaðir. Matís will hire an employee for Matvælamiðstöðin.

Þróunarfélag Austurlands, milk producers in Hérað, Búnaðarsamband Austurlands, Auðhumla, the municipality of Fljótdalshérað and Matís are responsible for projects on the development of a development center for small-scale food production.

In recent months, interested parties have been looking for ways to use the space in the Mjólkurstöðin's building in Egilsstaðir as a facility for small-scale food production. Extensive fermentation has taken place and a number of ideas have been discussed. This work has been carried out under the direction of Þróunarfélag Austurlands together with milk producers in Hérað, Búnaðarsamband Austurlands and Auðhumla. Matís and the municipality of Fljótsdalshérað have now joined the project. It has been decided to name the project, East Iceland Food Center.

The main goal of the project is to build a development center for small-scale food production, ie to establish small-scale production, product development and research on agricultural products, and to utilize the dairy's space for that purpose.

The space in the dairy at Egilsstaðir that is not used for milk processing today will be used for this purpose. Auðhumla will provide the premises and a special agreement will be made on that as well as the equipment that is available. Partners will work together to ensure the progress of the project so that the facilities in the dairy can be used for development work, teaching, courses and experimental activities in the food industry.

In the near future, Matís will hire an employee for the Food Center and the premises will be prepared for the operation. Matís invests heavily in its operations outside the capital area and in collaboration with companies and stakeholders, but the company operates offices in six locations outside Reykjavík.

Matvælamiðstöð Austurlands will collaborate on product development and research on dairy products, etc.

On Friday 12.6.2009, a work and strategy meeting was held in the cooling projects Kælibót and Chill-on (with connection to the project "Simulation of cooling processes"). 

Extensive experiments have been carried out in the field of cooling catfish from the market. Participants in the project are connected to different links in the chain: raw material handling, processing, transport and marketing. The first results from extensive research on cooling fish were presented. The experiments were performed in the winter of 2008-2009 under real conditions. A comparison has been made of:

• cooling capacity of different ice media and machines for their production
• cooling methods during processing (liquid and erosive cooling)
• different packaging for product packaging
• different transport routes (ships and flights) and the effect of improved temperature control on the transport of chilled products.

In parallel with the presentations, there was an important discussion and exchange of views on the importance of different experimental factors and results. The discussions were used to formulate a strategy for the next experiments that will be carried out this autumn. Then the best methods for each link in the chain will be selected together and the whole chain will be run in one experiment under real conditions. Transport processes have been mapped in terms of time and temperature, and refrigeration simulators will be used to set up those processes for storing products. In this way, the necessary measurements can be performed without the transfer from the sampling site to the laboratory interfering with the results. At the same time, the aim is to export the same products to the market in order to obtain a market participant's assessment of the products.

The participants in the projects Kælibótar and Chill-on are: Brim hf., Eimskip hf., Háskóli Íslands, Icelandair Cargo, Matís ohf., Optimar á Íslandi ehf., Samherji hf., Samskip hf. Skaginn hf. and Opale Seafood.

The projects are funded by AVS, EU, Tækniþróunarsjóður Rannís and Rannsóknarsjóður Háskóli Íslands.

At Matís ohf. has developed a fast and reliable method for analyzing the species of Icelandic marine resources, but the method is based on genetic analysis.

A survey in the United States revealed that about 25% of fish products sold in markets or restaurants are not sold under the right name, and of course cheap fish is being sold as a more expensive species. If this proportion is general, then consumers of seafood are being cheated by large sums.

This project, which was funded by the AVS Fund, results in another equally important benefit, which is to identify various marine organisms that are difficult to identify species by appearance alone. Such methods are very time consuming and require trained taxonomists. The genetic analysis method is fast and gives a reliable result, but it is possible to detect eggs, larvae, juveniles and juveniles of fish that can be difficult to identify, for example if samples are not whole or detect immature life forms.

There is also great interest in being able to analyze the composition of gastric contents from commercial stocks, but such observations are important in assessing the ecological relationship between commercial stocks. Thus, these genetic studies can shed light on the extent to which various commercial fish could eat eggs, larvae and juveniles of their own and other commercial stocks.

The genetic analysis method developed is based on the sequencing of three species differentiating genes (marker genes). The aim was to build a database for 26 marine resources. Genetic analysis was performed on the mitochondrial genes cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (COI), cytochrome b (Cytb) and 16S RNA (16S) from several samples from the 26 species defined as Iceland's commercial stocks. The method was tested on unknown samples obtained from fish shops, from the Marine Research Institute's sample collection and finally juveniles that were 2-8 cm long were identified. In all cases, the species could be genotyped using the DNA genetic method, while the appearance of the juveniles was quite difficult.

This new research tool is useful for those who conduct research on marine organisms, in addition to which it can be very useful in solving ever-increasing doubts in the markets.

Project manager's report: The development of a genetic analysis method for species determination remains in Iceland's commercial stocks.

AVS reference number: R 012-07

On Wednesday 24 June, a doctoral defense will take place at the Faculty of Science at the University of Iceland. Chemist Tom Brenner is defending his doctoral dissertation "Aggregation behavior of cod muscle proteins".

Opponents are dr. E. Allen Foegeding, professor at North Carolina State University and dr. Erik van der Linden, Professor at Wageningen University. The supervisor of the project was dr. Ragnar Jóhannsson, specialist at Matís together with Taco Nicolai from CNRS, Université Du Maine in France. The supervisor was dr. Ágúst Kvaran Professor at the University of Iceland.

Dr. Guðmundur G. Haraldsson, President of the Faculty of Science, will preside over the ceremony, which will take place in the Celebration Hall in the Main Building and will begin at 10:00.

Summary of study
The clustering of muscle proteins from cod was studied. The light distribution and viscoelastic measurements were mainly used in the studies. In the first part of the study, the major muscle protein, myosin, was isolated and studied. The second part of the study deals with the behavior of muscle protein solutions obtained by dissolving at pH ~ 11. Such a solution is applied on an industrial scale in this country to obtain muscle proteins from cod cuts as well as other fish cuts. All research was carried out at Matís ohf. and was intended to strengthen the theoretical basis for the aforementioned processing processes that have been developed at Matís.

The main results of the study are that the reversible clustering of muscle proteins as well as the isolated myosin is very similar to that of gelatin. Processing processes for the protein solutions therefore need to take into account this behavior of the proteins.

The fracture dimension structure of myosin clusters was then demonstrated. This will be the first time that this building, known for globular protein gels and clusters, has been confirmed for muscle protein. The viscoelastic properties of gels derived from protein solutions were investigated in a haze. It was found that broken gels regenerated under a cutting voltage if it is lower than a cutting voltage that can be defined as the actual breaking voltage. The formation of protein-deficient regions in the gels was subsequently demonstrated, but this mesoscopic phase chromatography is considered to be the first step in macroscopic phase chromatography.

The project was carried out in collaboration with the Université Du Maine in France and Matís ohf. The supervisor of the project was dr. Ragnar Jóhannsson, division manager at Matís ohf., Together with Taco Nicolai from CNRS, Université Du Maine in France.

Along with them sits on the doctoral committee of dr. Ágúst Kvaran, professor at the University of Iceland.About the doctoral dissertation

Tom Brenner was born in 1982. He completed his B.Sc. degree in chemistry from the University of Iceland in 2004. Today he works for Matís ohf.

Further information
Tom Brenner, 4225131, email: tom.brenner@matis.is
Ragnar Jóhannsson, 4225106, e-mail: ragnar.johannsson@matis.is

The annual conference of the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) was held in the first week of June. Matís' research was presented there and the company had no more or less than 15 posters

Matís had 15 posters / presentations at the IFT conference held in Anaheim, California. The IFT Conference is the largest food science conference held in the world and is attended by thousands of people annually. Matís presented his research on bioactive peptides and polyphenols from seafood, the processing properties of fish peptides and also research work related to the taste quality of salted fish. The research attracted a great deal of attention and there were many inquiries about co-operation in this field. It is clear from this conference that a great revival is associated with bioactive products from the sea and Matís is at the forefront in this field. The next IFT conference is in Chicago in 2010 and Matís aims for another strong income then. Matís research in this field takes place both in the Matís Biotechnology Center in Sauðárkrókur and the Matís laboratory in Gylfaflöt in Reykjavík, in close collaboration with the University of Florida.

Further information on this research and the conference is provided by Dr. Hörður G. Kristinsson, Head of the Biotechnology and Biochemicals Division, hordur.g.kristinsson@matis.is.