Cargill opens new Product Innovation Center, expands technical capabilities to serve bakers

New space includes lab for customer collaboration.

Cargill is expanding its capabilities to serve the baking industry with the opening of a new Product Innovation Center in Minneapolis, Minn.

The new center opened in March and allows bakery customers to collaborate directly with Cargill technology experts, working side-by-side on a wide range of new product initiatives. It is part of a network of Cargill bakery applications facilities located in North America and Europe (Atlanta, GA; Portland, OR.; Toronto, ON; and Vilvoorde, Belgium).

The Product Innovation Center is staffed by a team of food scientists with more than 120 years of combined experience in grain-based products. Areas of Cargill bakery expertise include differentiated whole grain breads and sweet goods; healthy fats and oils products; high fiber applications; reduced calorie products with alternative sweeteners; and gluten-free baked goods.

“The center focuses on new product development and R&D to provide solutions to complex technical challenges,” said Bill Atwell, Bakery Category Technical Leader, who leads a team with a wide range of experience and education in the food and cereal science, engineering and culinary areas. According to Atwell, the launch of Cargill’s Product Innovation Center reflects the company’s continuing investment in building its bakery category capabilities.

“Cargill helps customers grow their business by seamlessly delivering marketplace knowledge, ingredient technology, bakery formulation and application capabilities to bakery customers,” said Sheryl Stennett, Cargill bakery category vice president. “Our new Product Innovation Center, along with the other facilities in our bakery application network, enhance Cargill’s ability to help customers create unique bakery products to fill product pipelines and reduce time to market.”