New soy drink comes to market - 27th May 2022

Singapore's become a hub for the development of sustainable foods. Eco-friendly seafood's being grown in labs and they're swapping pork for tropical fruit in traditional dumplings. Another innovation is 'Sachi', which turns a waste product into soy wine.

This global first was developed by the National University of Singapore's food scientists. The soy wine uses wastewater from tofu production. It's manufactured by start-up company SinFooTech. Sachi launched to consumers last year, with a half litre bottle selling for $28.

SinFooTech's business development manager is Felicia Ng. She sees the benefits in upcycling food waste.

Felicia Ng: "At SinFooTech we wanted to valorise food waste – to actually upcycle all this unuse, under-utilised liquid waste. So, we turned it into something that is similar to wine, so we call it soya wine."

SinFooTech's process works by adding sugar and yeast to the wastewater. The mixture then sits for between two and four weeks. However, raw tofu wastewater goes sour very quickly. This limits production, as operations manager Fauzi Ismail outlines.

Fauzi Ismail: "So basically we have a very short period of time before the liquid itself turn sour and bad. So that is the major limitation we have. So it's advisable to do it between two to three hours before the product go, turn bad."

Currently, the SinFooTech plant manufactures between 1,000 and 2,000 litres of soy wine a month. However, this is less than one percent of the tofu factory's total wastewater. Opportunities for expansion are huge.

The Sachi launch event welcomed food and wine writers to try the new alcohol. Dannon Har found the taste pleasant and unique.

Dannon Har: "I think that if people expect wine from this, it's not what they're going to get. I think it's something that is of its own and people should drink it – they are thinking that way.

"I haven't had much experience with it. I would definitely drink more of it, if that’s – answers the question. But it's still not my first drink of choice for sure."