Cargill has announced its plan to invest US$6.4 million to expand its food pilot capabilities at its North America Pilot Development Centre in Savage, enabling bakery customers to increase their speed-to-market with new products. The new facility will allow the edible oils business to conduct multi-scale, continuous piloting, starting with the refining of new vegetable oils and blends, and ending with innovative shortening solutions for breads, cakes, cookies, frying and other uses. Other food ingredients, including those used for confectionery products and infant nutrition, can be piloted at the site as well.
Florian Schattenmann, CTO at Cargill, commented: “Expanding our piloting capabilities will help us deliver more quickly what matters most to our customers. It allows us to better partner with our customers to evaluate new raw materials, validate performance specifications and develop new products through a distinctive continuum of innovation services all located within the Twin Cities.”
Highlights of the 6,500-square-foot facility include:
- A refinery pilot plant to create new oils and blends using the latest technologies to produce shortenings that have enhanced functionality for specific customer applications;
- A fats and oils crystallisation centre to process shortening, important for ensuring the right textures in newly designed products; and
- A lab equipped to rapidly analyse key fats and oils quality parametres.
Construction of the new facility, which sits adjacent to Cargill’s existing Engineering R&D Lab in Savage, began in April 2019 and is expected to be fully operation late this summer. The new centre will complement Cargill’s Minneapolis Research and Development Centre and Cargill Food Innovation Centre.
Sonia Punwani, global bakery category leader for Cargill’s edible oils business, said: “Our expanded pilot facility and our Food Innovation Centre together will allow us to more quickly respond to customer requests for samples and test their performance in bakery products. This is a big step forward for us to support bakery innovation with the combination of science, customer intimacy, and market insights.”
The new facility will join other pilot and food innovation facilities Cargill also operates including its European Research and Development Centre in Vilvoorde, Belgium; Asia Innovation Centre in Beijing, China; and Cargill Innovation Centre in Singapore. The global presence, the company added, allows for broad knowledge sharing to create customised regional solutions.
