‘Ready for industry’: Puratos UK unveil new €1.5 million innovation centre

Monday 12th September 2016 sees the grand unveiling of a brand new €1.5m world class Innovation Centre in Oxfordshire, England, by global bakery, patisserie and chocolate ingredients expert Puratos.

Puratos are considered pioneers of innovation, inventing the first ever bread improver in 1953, a development that revolutionised the industry. Since then they have continued to make substantial investments to ensure that they stay at the forefront of product and process technologies, driven by ever-changing consumer needs.

Puratos prides itself on being consumer and customer focused, watching for and interpreting the latest market trends to inspire its research programs.

Puratos UK has now taken another important step in bolstering its commitment to help its customers enhance their business by introducing a new Industrial Bakery Competence Centre (IBCC) in Fringford, which will focus on the research of bakery industrial processes, the development of industrial applications and the training of new and existing customers.

The IBCC, which complements Puratos’ existing patisserie & chocolate innovation capabilities, will help customers to reduce product development time thanks to its new industry standard equipment situated in a laboratory environment that enables safe and easy testing of new ingredients and recipes.

Julian Lewis Puratos UK MD commented saying: “We’re delighted to unveil our new €1.5 million world class innovation centre to the industry. This is an important step in our ongoing commitment to investing in our customers’ success, as well as in achieving our ambitious aspirations to double our market share in the next five years.

“We have spent many months collaborating closely with our key industrial partners, who recognise our strong technology expertise, innovation capabilities and outstanding product quality. The detailed design of the facility and its equipment has been guided by these relationships, ensuring our newest investment closely matches their large scale plants as well as meeting their future needs.

“By expanding our industrial development capabilities at Fringford, it will enable us to better help our customers to enhance their businesses through research, development, training and inspiration. Driven by our strong expertise and commitment to technological innovation, Puratos UK is now ready for the latest challenges facing our industry.”

Specific capabilities at the Fringford Innovation Centre:

• Rapid testing and development of bakery solutions tailored to the challenges of large-scale manufacture 
• Development of applications and training in patisserie – from concept to finish goods
• Technical, taste and production expertise in chocolate in patisserie
• Sensory analysis – consumer testing to validate new products and applications in bakery, patisserie and chocolate
• Specialist pilot equipment providing a realistic production environment to test new products and trial production

Puratos UK is part of the wider, family-owned Puratos Group, which offers a full range of innovative products and raw materials for the bakery, patisserie and chocolate sectors in over 100 countries worldwide. Its customers are primarily artisans, industry, retailers and food service.

The development at Fringford in Oxfordshire is part of Puratos’ global investment in its network of 58 innovation centres worldwide. These centres ensure customer and market proximity for its local products. 

The company recently opened a €15m Inspirience Centre in Brussels focused on the next generation of R&D-led innovations.  It is a hub for the exchange and development of worldwide knowledge, experience and inspiration, generating the technologies of tomorrow for our global needs.