Tate & Lyle Unveils Global Innovation Center in Germany
16 Mar 2017 --- Tate & Lyle PLC have unveiled its upgraded Food Systems Global Innovation Center in Lübeck, Germany. In May 2016, Tate & Lyle’s Food Systems facility in Lübeck was refocused as a site dedicated exclusively to innovation, applications and solutions expertise for customers of its global Food Systems business. As part of this refocusing, investments were made to expand and enhance the customer-facing facilities, and these are now complete and open for customers to use.
As well as its extensive applications laboratories, the Lübeck Center includes four large state-of-the-art pilot plants with dedicated areas for dairy, convenience, bakery and meat preparation allowing for fully customized prototype production as well as the demonstration of on-site technical expertise. The pilot plants have the capacity for up to 300 trials per month. The Center will also be used to hold customer and distributor events, including innovation workshops, seminars and on-site technical training.
Brian Walker, SVP & General Manager, Food Systems Europe, Middle East & Africa, Tate & Lyle, said: “We are delighted to welcome our customers to our state-of-the-art Food Systems Global Innovation Center in Lübeck. Working with our technical experts across the world, this Center will play a pivotal role in the development and future growth of our global Food Systems business.”
Walker told FoodIngredientsFirst: “Here at our Food Systems Global Innovation Center in Lubeck, we have dedicated 
areas for dairy, convenience, bakery and meat. With our comprehensive technology know-how and extensive portfolio, we can partner with our customers to deliver specific product attributes and unique characteristics such as stability, texture, viscosity, fat and sugar reduction and organoleptic properties.”
“The state of the art pilot plants have capacity for up to 300 trials per month and our customers can match their own production techniques in our pilot plants resulting in significantly shortened development times. We anticipate that we will host up to 100 separate customer visits each year at our new center.”
“We have over 100 years of knowledge in food stabilization and with more than 50% of our 130 employees based here dedicated to R&D, innovation is truly our key focus.” 
Gianluca Brusoni, Director Global Food Systems R&D and Applications, Tate & Lyle, also commented: “In Food Systems, we operate locally but innovate and share recipes and technical expertise globally, so that our teams of technical experts across the world are able to consistently provide our customers with the bespoke solutions they need in their local markets. Our Center in Lübeck is very important as it is the hub through which this global innovation and expertise in Food Systems is shared.”
The Center in Lübeck is part of Tate & Lyle’s global network of applications laboratories, which includes Tate & Lyle’s Commercial and Food Innovation Center in Chicago, its primary research and innovation center. Customers visit these laboratories to work with Tate & Lyle’s food scientists to reformulate their products and to develop solutions using Tate & Lyle’s wide range of ingredients.
by Elizabeth Kenward
