Manufacturer of clean label and organic ingredients KRÖNER-STÄRKE is celebrating the opening of its brand-new development kitchen and meeting space at its headquarters in Ibbenbüren, Germany. With this investment, the company not only wants to advance its own research and development work, but also to accompany its own processes even more closely and to plan and develop future projects with customers directly on site.
Located close to its laboratory facility, the development kitchen will see numerous client meetings taking a more practical approach to ingredients and recipe development. The food technologists are able to demonstrate the suitability of specific ingredients for a product or group of products such as pastries or breads. This way, clients can immediately see results and give valuable feedback, speeding up the development process.
KRÖNER-STÄRKE expects to see a continued increase in demand for its functional ingredients, and the versatility of its product range is allowing firms to diversify their ranges to meet current consumer demands. With Europe experiencing an upward trend in consumers opting to follow plant-based or flexitarian diets, for example, the company’s range of spelt-based ingredients is proving particularly popular.
As consumer interest in functional foods continues to grow, the R&D centre enables KRÖNER-STÄRKE to walk through the customer’s development process alongside their own and share ideas. The results from the analysis are available immediately to enable further changes and product improvements if needed.
Commercial Manager Henrik de Vries explained: “Again all odds and even working through the Covid pandemic, we are fully operational now and meeting with clients to develop ideas in the kitchen together. There is no doubt that being able to taste the results in a development environment is a huge step forward for the company – and a huge benefit for our clients.”
The investment represents further growth for KRÖNER-STÄRKE which only recently expanded its warehousing capacity, operating under a fully automated system to deal with increasing demand for its specialist clean label products.
KRÖNER-STÄRKE develops bespoke solutions to suit individual needs across a wide range of food ingredients including baked goods, convenience products, and dietetic products, and has a reputation for technical excellence in new product development.
Editorial contact:
Editor: Kiran Grewal kgrewal@kennedys.co.uk
