Kerry, purveyor of taste and nutrition solutions, recently celebrated the opening of its new West Coast Customer Engagement Center in Commerce, CA. The event brought together customers and local dignitaries to showcase the center's innovative offerings and highlight Kerry's role as a partner for sustainable nutrition, innovation, and taste solutions. Notable attendees included Marcella Smyth, consul general of Ireland and Killian McMahon, director of Enterprise Ireland, West Coast. 

Attendees had the opportunity to experience Kerry’s technologies firsthand through a curated range of product showcases, engaging demonstrations and insight presentations. Visitors on the day were also exposed to Kerry’s industry partnerships with impactful organizations, such as Cafe Feminino, which supports coffee farmers around the world. 

Kerry’s newly renovated customer engagement space will act as an important co-creation center aimed at West Coast food and beverage manufacturers. Deploying global technology in a local setting, the Commerce facility will facilitate rapid development and refinement of food and beverage solutions in collaboration with customers. With enhanced application, research, development and pilot manufacturing facilities on site, Kerry aims to support local customers in real time to develop and launch winning food and beverage products to market. 

In a further effort to shorten product development and launch cycles for food and beverage companies, Commerce will also be a host site to Kerry Kalaido, an AI-powered concepting tool powered with proprietary data that will allow companies to short-circuit traditional concept ideation and development sessions. 

These enhancements at the Kerry Commerce facility will be underpinned by refreshed product capabilities with a new portfolio, called “Taste Alley" also launched at site. This portfolio is specifically targeted at up-and-coming food and beverage companies to push through early phase obstacles to launching market products, such as traditionally high "minimum order quantities" (MOQs) and long lead time for materials. This market leading service model will be a key offering at the Kerry Commerce facility. 

“This new space in Commerce is designed to facilitate R&D collaboration, speed up innovation cycles, and allow customers to work directly with our technical experts or independently in the space,” says John Cahalane, Kerry North America president and CEO. “We are constantly looking at ways to serve our customers better, so we look forward to offering our Taste Alley portfolio and Kerry Kalaido solution to ensure they can commercialise at speed in an evolving market." 

Opening the engagement center is also an exciting way for the company to reinvest in the Commerce site and support the communities where its colleagues work and live, Kerry says. Kerry’s dedication to community involvement is integral to the company’s Beyond the Horizon sustainability strategy. A key component of this initiative provides each Kerry facility with a donation budget for local causes and a paid volunteer day for all employees. This year, the team donated to various nonprofit organizations in support of Los Angeles and surrounding communities in response to the wildfires. 

Related: Bridging the gap between authentic dairy taste and sustainability