Unilever R&D Opens Centre for Assembled Foods in Italy

The challenge for the technical centre is to develop convenient, tasty and healthy assembled food products. The approach will be to use exclusive ingredients and culinary techniques to deliver restaurant quality with convenient foods.

24/09/08 Unilever has opened the Centre of Excellence Assembled Foods, a global product development centre for composite food products such as meals, salads, snacks and bakery goods. It will bring together all Unilever's know-how of complex food products, such as the selection and protection of high quality ingredients in products (fruits & vegetables, meats, fish, cereals), downstream product assembly and freezing technology. The R&D centre employs 50 R&D professionals in Cisterna, Italy.

The challenge for the technical centre is to develop convenient, tasty and healthy assembled food products. The approach will be to use exclusive ingredients and culinary techniques to deliver restaurant quality with convenient foods. The centre’s objective will be to achieve step changes in taste quality, naturalness and nutritional goodness through innovative products and process design.

To achieve this, the Unilever R&D centre in Cisterna will build towards a world-class technical capability in:

• The assembled foods value chain – from raw materials to products
All the technical know-how needed to make assembled foods: from raw materials to creative product formulation and design, to manufacturing and distribution to the shelf - around the world.

• Freezing and downstream product assembly
Leveraging the Italian passion for food and know-how on frozen foods into new markets and into chilled and ambient products.

• Product and process design
Product design and processing technology to deliver restaurant quality assembled foods for tasty, healthy and convenient meals. Includes new proprietary technologies to increase quality, preservation and shelf life.

• Scouting the external world
Scouting new trends focusing on novel technologies, process design and full upscaling are the first steps for the creation of early idea prototypes that can be further developed through open innovation and exclusive partnerships.

Roberto Nardi, Director of the Centre of Excellence Assembled Foods, stated at the opening: " Now we celebrate our passion for food and for R&D excellence. These two ingredients allow us to bring restaurant quality to people's plate at home, with convenient food products.