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　　Talc Powder

　　A Peter Brigg discovers how talc from Luzenac's Trimouns in France find its way into food and agricultural products - from chewing gum to olive oil. High in the French Pyrenees, some 1,700m above sea level, lies Trimouns, a huge deposit of hydrated magnesium silicate - talc to you and me. Talc from Trimouns, and from ten other Luzenac mines across the globe, is used in the manufacture of a vast array of everyday products extending from paper, paint and plaster to cosmetics, plastics and car tyres. And of course there is always talc's best known end use: talcum powder for babies1 bottoms. But the true versatility of this remarkable mineral is nowhere better displayed than in its sometimes surprising use in certain niche markets in the food and agriculture industries.

　　B Take, for example, the chewing gum business. Every year, Talc de Luzenac France - which owns and operates the Trimouns mine and is a member of the international Luzenac Group (art of Rio Tinto minerals) supplies about 6,000 tones of talc to chewing gum manufacturers in Europe. "We've been selling to this sector of the market since the 1960s," says Laurent Fournier, sales manager in Luzenac's Specialties business unit in Toulouse. "Admittedly, in terms of our total annual sales of talc, the amount we supply to chewing gum manufacturers is relatively small, but we see it as a valuable niche market: one where customers place a premium on securing supplies from a reliable, high quality source. Because of this, long term allegiance to a proven suppler is very much a feature of this sector of die talc market." Switching sources - in the way that you might choose to buy, say, paperclips from Supplier A rather than from Supplier B - is not an easy option for chewing gum manufacturers." Fournier says. "The cost of reformulating is high, so when customers are using a talc grade that works, even if it's expensive, they are understandably reluctant to switch."

　　C But how is talc actually used in the manufacture of chewing gum? Patrick Delord, an engineer with a degree in agronomics, who has been with Luzenac for 22 years and is now senior market development manager, Agriculture and Food, in Europe, explains that chewing gums has four main components. "The most important of them is the gum base," he says. "It's the gum base that puts the chew into chewing gum. It binds all the ingredients together, creating a soft, smooth texture. To this the manufacturer then adds sweeteners, softeners and flavourings. Our talc is used as a filler in the gum base. The amount vanes between, say, ten and 35 per cent, depending on the type of gum. Fruit flavoured chewing gum, for example, is slightly acidic and would react with the calcium carbonate that the manufacturer might otherwise use as a filler. Talc, on the other hand, makes an ideal filler because it's non-reactive chemically. In the factory, talc is also used to dust the gum base pellets and to stop the chewing gum sticking during the lamination and packing process," Delord adds.

　　D The chewing gum business is, however, just one example of talc's use in the food sector. For the past 20 years or so, olive oil processors in Spain have been taking advantage of talc's unique characteristics to help them boost the amount of oil they extract from crushed olives According to Patrick Delord, talc is especially useful for treating what he calls "difficult" olives. After the olives are harvested - preferably early in the morning because their taste is better if they are gathered in the cool of the day they are taken to the processing plant. There they arc crushed and then stirred for 30-45 minutes. In the old days, the resulting paste was passed through an olive press but nowadays it's more common to add water and (K-6IH) the mixture to separate the water and oil from the solid matter The oil and water are then allowed to settle so that the olive oil layer can be )and bottled. “Difficult” olives are those that are more reluctant than the norm to yield up their full oil content. This may be attributable to the particular species of olive, or to its water content and the time of year the olives arc collected - at the beginning and the end of the season their water content is often either too high or too low. These olives are easy to recognize because they produce a lot of extra foam during the stirring process, a consequence of an excess of a fine solid that acts as a natural emulsifier. The oil in this emulsion is lost when the water is disposed of. Not only that, if the waste water is disposed of directly into local fields - often the case in many smaller processing operations - the emulsified oil may take some time to biodegrade and so be harmful to the environment.