Glanbia last week held a grand opening for its new 7,000-sq.-ft. Glanbia Collaboration Center in Twin Falls, Idaho.

Glanbia last week held a grand opening for its new 7,000-sq.-ft. Glanbia Collaboration Center in Twin Falls, Idaho.

The Glanbia Collaboration Center is a customer-focused development center that includes pilot plant equipment for developing and testing prototypes of bars, baked goods and many other applications for Glanbia’s dairy protein and flax ingredients. The new center allows Glanbia to streamline their R&D operations into a building directly behind the analytical and applications lab already there.

The pilot plant previously was housed within Glanbia Foods’ whey processing facility in Richfield, Idaho. That plant is the largest whey processing operation in the United States. It produces 18 million lb. of dairy ingredients annually. Glanbia will expand its whey processing operations in Richfield, using space once occupied by the pilot plant equipment. 
 
“The expansion of our Twin Falls R&D operation with the new Collaboration Center will speed the delivery of product prototypes to our customers, effectively reducing development time by almost 40%,” says Eric Bastian, vice president of R&D at Glanbia USA. “We’re finding that our customers want more hands-on involvement with product design, and this facility will allow them to do that. This new site will enable us to work side-by-side with our customers on product development in a much timelier manner.”

According to Jeff Williams, president and CEO of Glanbia Foods, the extra space made available in the Richfield plant will allow for development of new nutritional products.