Functional colour for food and beverage
The pigment was never the hard part. Keeping it alive through the process was.
What this line is
Natural pigments for food and beverage, sold as a specification, with the numbers published. Blue ships today. Green and violet are in development off the same biomass.
Who it is for
Formulation leads replacing a synthetic dye
You need to know what your process does to the pigment before you run it. Spirulina is the only raw material we work on, so the answer comes from our own trials rather than from a supplier data sheet.
Brand owners taking artificial colour off the label
Spirulina extract clears the label in both the EU and the United States. We extract it ourselves, so the shade you sign off is the shade the plant produces.
Why natural colour
Nobody is replacing Brilliant Blue because it stopped working.
Synthetic dyes are cheap, stable and indifferent to heat. They are coming off labels because the label is what the customer reads, and because the regulators have started to move. Here is what that means for a food or beverage brand.
The regulation has a date
In the EU, six synthetic colours have carried a warning sentence about attention in children since 2010. In the United States the FDA revoked Red 3 in January 2025 and asked the industry to take the remaining petroleum-based dyes out by the end of 2026. California bars six of them, Blue 1 among them, from school food from the end of 2027.
The label is the product
Spirulina extract is a colouring food in the EU under Regulation 1333/2008 and an exempt colour additive in the United States under 21 CFR 73.530. The ingredient line reads spirulina extract. No E number, no warning sentence, no artificial colour disclosure, and nothing to explain at the shelf.
Blue is the hard one to replace
Red, yellow and orange have several natural sources. For blue, spirulina extract is the option cleared on both sides of the Atlantic, and it is a protein, so it minds acid and heat where a dye does not. That is the problem this line exists to solve: specified from pH 4.0, retention published for each condition, a process window you can plan around.
What it costs, honestly
A natural blue is dosed in grams per litre where a dye is dosed in milligrams, so the price per litre is a different calculation. We publish the colour value beside the price so you can run it on colour units delivered, and the biorefinery keeps that number lower than a single product plant could.
Read the reformulation guide: replacing Brilliant Blue FCF with spirulina extract →
Why buy it from us
Specified at the low end
Most natural blue gives up below pH 5. Ours is specified from pH 4.0, and we publish the retention at each condition instead of one flattering number.
The label reads clean
Spirulina extract under EU 1333/2008 and 21 CFR 73.530 in the United States. No E number, no artificial colour disclosure, no Novel Food path to open.
Priced per use
The same biomass carries four lines, so the colour does not have to price as though it were the only thing coming off the stream.
In stock
In development
Not orderable yet. Where a date exists we publish it, and where the work is still at the bench we say research and do not invent a launch window. Every one of these has a proposed specification you can read under NDA, and most have lab samples available now.
Evaluate before you commit.
Free samples are sized so you can actually run the test. Minimum order is 1 kg, and the price is on every product page.