Fred Mussawir-Key is inventor of the 1 Cal per spray non-stick cooking oil, Frylight, and developed a range of food products to address a number of dietetic disciplines.
He established his company in the late 1970s and retired at 69, entrusting a notably successful business to the Dairy Crest group.
His business developments derived from identifying opportunities and comprehensive market and consumer research.
He saw the first opportunity, a shortage of Chinese soya sauce in Europe during the 1970s Cultural Revolution that disrupted industry and trade in China.
By applying the science acquired at the poly and further research, he developed from his home probably the first European produced soya sauce. Then a range of Chinese style sauces, which he produced from converted warehouse space in South-East London, for the BLUE DRAGON label.
The healthy food trend in the USA of “no-salt no-sugar added” encouraged him to develop a new range which was in addition allergy friendly and vegetarian/vegan, thus complementing the diets of slimmers, allergy sufferers and vegetarians; also those suffering from kidney-insufficiency. This range was exported widely, chiefly to the USA.
It was in the USA that he observed the growing potential of spray cooking oils to cut calories. These were dispensed from aerosol cans, the output of which was difficult to measure and they were pressurised by Butane and Propane, gases not permitted in contact with foods in Europe.
He developed a reversed emulsion composition to lower the product’s viscosity and enable spraying by finger actuated spray-pump (no propellant) and designed this to dispense ‘1 Cal per spray’. This became the patented nonstick cooking oil Frylight, now selling some 15 million cans a year.
Fred has also found time to help at the university in numerous ways, developing courses of workshops and delivering them at both the Greenwich and Medway campuses.
