Bell Flavors & Fragrances EMEA inaugurates new culinary center in UK

01 Oct 2019 --- Bell Flavors & Fragrances EMEA has inaugurated its new culinary center and office space in Ketton, Stamford, UK. At the new location, the flavor house seeks to strengthen its culinary capacities and regional reach within the UK market with a focus on speed-to-market and customer-centric culinary innovations tailored to the needs of its British customers. The space’s flavor capabilities comprise applications in savory, sweet, dairy and beverage segments.

“The new culinary center and office space incorporates a test kitchen, meeting space and office facilities,” says Oliver Saalmann, Vice President Flavours Division. “[The new facility] will allow us to accelerate market-oriented product development together with our customers, explore and develop new concepts and product solutions, host tasting and innovation sessions and increase our expertise in the culinary sector, while keeping track of regional legal implications.”

Culinary classes at Bell’s inauguration event.With its high activity in the European market, Bell has been training its cross-regional market understanding of the UK food and beverage industry over the past years. Complementing Bell’s headquarters in Leipzig, Germany, the new UK facility is designed to encourage creativity, target culinary innovation and focus on regional product needs, with an own culinary chef working on-site to deliver on food innovation.

“The kitchen and tasting area sets the ideal spot to expand our culinary capabilities and to collaboratively develop new food solutions together with our customers and partners, based on current or future market dynamics, changing dietary needs and by helping to create healthier products that are in-line with consumer expectations. It is an inspiring, modern place for ideation and networking and gives our team a creative environment to innovate with flavors, botanical extracts and other food ingredients to create new experiences with a focus on authenticity and clean labeling,” Saalmann notes.

The official opening ceremony was held on September 26 and attended by customers, partners, the Bell EMEA management including President Raymond Heinz and Vice President Oliver Saalmann, alongside the UK team, Bell’s culinary chef, R&D and marketing team members. The ceremony was further highlighted by former GB Paralympics captain Jack Rutter, who cut the ribbon as a symbol of the official opening.

Further to this, Bell invited UK celebrity chef Richard Bainbridge, who accompanied the event with an exclusive food demo, using Bell’s botanical extracts and natural flavors in his culinary creations. Attendees were able to taste varieties such as Benedicts cone including a cod roe emulsion and pickled cucumber or squash and sage terrine with black garlic and kale.

In other developments, Bell recently launched a new range of botanical hemp flavors and extracts obtained from the Cannabis sativa plant earlier this month, based on growing consumer interest and market trends around natural hemp-based food and beverage products. The new range offers “authentic taste profiles” for various categories, including non-alcoholic and alcoholic beverages, bakery products and sweet goods, as well as savory products. The hemp extracts are used in combination with other natural flavoring components in the company’s range of natural flavors.

By Benjamin Ferrer

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