Baking & Snack - May 2014 - 25

Tate & Lyle builds platforms
Tate & Lyle's new Global Commercial and Food Innovation Center has
been finding solutions to the most
challenging demands in today's
baking industry since it opened in
Hoffman Estates, IL, in June 2012.
Bakers and snack manufacturers
who have visited the facility have
found applications and ingredient
technology labs, a culinary demonstration kitchen, consumer insight
and sensory testing facilities, and a
pilot plant.
The pilot plant offers prototype
manufacturing capabilities including a continuous cookie and cracker
processing line, one of only two
suppliers in North America to offer
such a service to customers.
"Customers use our equipment
to make products for validation and
consumer trials," said Judy Turner,
director of culinary at Tate & Lyle.
"That's one step further than other
ingredient partners: Our customers
don't have to repurpose their own
production lines or take a lot of time
to do it at the bench." Bakers can
test cook times and temperatures
in the five-zone oven and refine the
crunchiness and crispness of either
wire cut or rotary mold cookies.
Tate & Lyle's labs, kitchen and pilot plant capabilities encourage collaboration with its team. Bakers and
snack manufacturers can work with
food scientists, marketers and product managers as well as culinary and
sensory teams. These teams focus on
three platforms: sweeteners, texturants, and health and wellness.
"Designed to enable side-by-side
collaboration with food and beverage manufacturers from 'idea-toplate,' the Innovation Center helps
customers work with Tate & Lyle on
ideation, sensory testing, commercialization and nutritional studies,"
Ms. Turner said. "This enables food
and beverage manufacturers to confidently and rapidly deliver innovative and customized solutions that

satisfy consumers' increasing demand for health, convenience, value
and taste."
Meeting the challenge of improving the healthfulness of products
while maintaining taste has been the
focus of many of the center's projects in the past two years, including
reducing sodium in salted, baked
snack ships and calorie and sugar
reduction in cereal bars.
In the case of sodium reduction,
a leading snack chip manufacturer
needed help meeting its goal of reducing sodium by 15% in topically
salted, baked snack chips and wanted to use Tate & Lyle's cookie/cracker processing line. "We took the
product and made samples that met
the manufacturer's criteria using our
proprietary sodium reduction technology, Soda-Lo Salt Microspheres,"
Ms. Turner explained.
In the realm of sweeteners and
texture, Tate & Lyle has helped a
customer reduce calories and sugar
in its cereal bar while retaining the
same sweetness and texture. "We
worked in partnership with the
customer to reformulate the bar using Splenda Sucralose for sweetness
and Promitor Soluble Corn Fiber
for texture," she said. The new bar
performed well in the sensory testing lab.
The center isn't a static place; it
was built to stay relevant for the
future. "We've built in a lot of flexibility so that additional labs can be
added for any new focus that may
come," Mr. Turner said. "We continually evaluate the trends in equipment and processing to keep our
technology up to date, and we move
equipment in and out as needed
to ensure we always have the right
equipment for the project on hand."
With today's rapidly changing
food industry and ever-demanding
consumers, that kind of support is
just what bakers and snack manufacturers need to maintain a vibrant
product development pipeline.

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Baking & Snack - May 2014

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