National Starch to Build 'Texture Center of Excellence'
Center will Offer New Tools in Understanding and Controlling Texture
National starch food Innovation announced that it is building a state-of-the-art Texture Center of Excellence to support the company's expanding texture efforts. Scheduled to be operational in 2008, the multimillion dollar Texture Center of Excellence will support National Starch's programs to meet the growing industry need for texture understanding and control, and will help accelerate innovation and new product development and provide for greater creative collaboration with customers, according to Joseph Light, Senior Director, Customer Solutions and Product Innovation.
"Our research shows that, compared to flavor, texture is clearly an under-exploited dimension in foods. We see tremendous opportunity to work with customers to optimize texture in food systems as a means of creating superior customer satisfaction and competitive advantage. Our goal, as a specialty ingredients company, is to create a unique group of capabilities that coalesce into what we call a 'Texture Center of Excellence.' This will be one of the best facilities available anywhere to refine the understanding of how texture is experienced by consumers and transform that understanding into product development action and consumer-winning food formulations," said Light.
Specialty starches, one of the most flexible groups of functional ingredients used in foods today, can provide texture properties in nearly all food systems, ranging from low to high moisture foods. Researchers in National's Texture Center will delve into the understanding of nearly every starch raw material currently available.
The Texture Center of Excellence will be housed at National Starch's global headquarters in Bridgewater, NJ, and will include a focus group room with observation area, a computerized descriptive analysis room, a culinary kitchen, isolated testing booths, and client meeting rooms. Clients unable to travel to the facility for sensory and/or consumer testing will be able to participate remotely via the Internet. The new facility will also be equipped with specialized instrumentation to conduct texture characterization and accelerate the pace of development.
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