Cargill expands food pilot facility to accelerate product launches

Cargill is enabling its bakery customers to increase their speed-to-market with new products after e…

Cargill is enabling its bakery customers to increase their speed-to-market with new products after expanding its food pilot capabilities at its North American Pilot Development Centre.

The company invested $6.4 million to expand its Savage, Minn.-based facility, allowing the company’s edible oils business unit to conduct multi-scale, continuous piloting, starting with the refining of new vegetable oils and blends and ending with innovative shortening solutions for breads, cakes, cookies, frying and other uses.

Other food ingredients, including those used for confectionery products and infant nutrition, can be piloted at the site as well.

“Expanding our piloting capabilities will help us deliver more quickly what matters most to our customers,” says Florian Schattenmann, Chief Technology Officer of Cargill.

“It allows us to better partner with our customers to evaluate new raw materials, validate performance specifications and develop new products through a distinctive continuum of innovation services all located within the Twin Cities.”

As well as a refinery plant, the 6,500 sq ft facility includes a state-of-the-art fats and oils crystallisation centre and a lab t analyse key fats and oils quality parameters.

Construction of the new facility, which sits adjacent to Cargill’s existing Engineering R&D Lab in Savage, began in April 2019 and is expected to be fully operational late summer 2020.