Dive Brief:
- Archer Daniels Midland recently celebrated the grand opening of its flavor creation, application and customer service facility in New Jersey. Among the 15,700-square-foot facility’s features are a pilot plant to encourage the development of sweet and savory flavor applications.
- The innovation center aims to engage customers in the process of developing products and applications, while providing a comfortable work space for customers to remain connected to their offices.
- "This facility provides a great way for us to work side-by-side with our customers to develop on-trend solutions to meet the unique demands of their customers," Vince Macciocchi, president of ADM’s Wild Flavors & Specialty Ingredients business unit, said in a statement.
Dive Insight:
ADM’s acquisitions of companies such as Wild Flavors, Eatem Foods and Harvest Innovations, established a portfolio of ingredients and flavors to provide integrated solutions for customers.
ADM joins fellow industry member Cargill in fostering partnerships with customers at innovation centers to develop reformulations of ingredients or to create new products. These companies understand that innovation is crucial to expansion in order to meet consumers' changing preferences when it comes to ingredients.
Other companies that have opened R&D centers in the last year include Nestle and Diamond Foods.