Tate & Lyle, a global provider of ingredients and solutions to the food, beverage and other industries, opens a commercial and food innovation center in Hoffman Estates, Ill. The 110,000-sq.-ft., state-of-the-art facility will 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. It also will significantly accelerate their delivery to market.

The company says the facility will act as the cornerstone for its increasing global network of research, food application and technical support laboratories and serve as the global headquarters of its Innovation and Commercial Development unit. It’s also the North American headquarters of Tate & Lyle’s Specialty Food Ingredients Division.

Housing advanced food science research and processing laboratories and applications and technical services laboratories, the center also has a culinary demonstration kitchen, consumer insight and sensory testing facilities, a pilot plant and prototype manufacturing facilities and e-global communications capabilities. At the grand opening on June 13, visitors were joined by senior executives and employees from Tate & Lyle for a tour of the facility, culinary demonstrations, sampling of products and other events.

“Our new center demonstrates our commitment to develop distinctive, high-quality specialty food ingredients and solutions for our customers across the world,” says Olivier Rigaud, president, Specialty Food Ingredients. “The center’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 customers’ functional, formulation and nutritional needs, and to accelerate the process of bringing new products to market.”

Karl Kramer, president of innovation and commercial development says, “The new center 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.”