The 110,000-sq. ft. facility is designed to facilitate customer collaboration from idea-to-plate through the development of new food and beverage products that satisfy consumers' increasing demand for health, convenience, value and taste, and to significantly accelerate their delivery to market.

The new facility will “act as the cornerstone for Tate & Lyle's increasing global network of research, food application and technical support laboratories and will serve as the global headquarters of its Innovation and Commercial Development unit,” a company release notes. It also is the North American headquarters of Tate & Lyle's Speciality Food Ingredients division.

The facility includes advanced food science research and processing laboratories, applications and technical services laboratories, a culinary demonstration kitchen, a full suite of consumer insight and sensory testing facilities, pilot plant and prototype manufacturing facilities, and extensive global communications capabilities.

Speaking at the official opening ceremony, Olivier Rigaud, president, Speciality Food Ingredients said, "Our new Centre demonstrates our commitment to develop distinctive, high-quality speciality food ingredients and solutions for our customers across the world. The Centre's state-of-the-art facilities together with our highly skilled and experienced teams of scientists, marketers and product managers, provide a unique combination to help meet our customer's functional, formulation and nutritional needs, and to accelerate the process of bringing new products to market."

Karl Kramer, president, Innovation and Commercial Development said, "The new Centre will enable us to collaborate more closely with our customers and deliver the creative solutions they need to stay ahead in today's fast-paced and evolving global marketplace."

 From the June 14, 2012, Prepared Foods’ Daily News