A factory for innovation   

“You could also call it an innovation factory,” says Paul Cornillon, describing the Lille Innovation Centre, completed in 2008. “The top floor is for thinking and creating concepts and new ingredients; the first floor has our  applications laboratories, where we develop prototypes; and the ground floor houses the pilot plant, where we communicate to our customers ‘yes, you can do this in your own factories’.”

Paul is R&D Director, Food & Industrial Ingredients, Europe, Middle East, Africa. The research and development at Lille, he says, is all about solving customers’ problems by showing them how they can make a better product using Tate & Lyle ingredients. It is based on the ‘CORE’ strategy – Create new tastes, textures and product formats; Optimize recipe costs; Rebalance formulations for a better nutritional profile; Enrich with ingredients like fibre – and in 2009 alone created 200 new finished products.

“We tell customers: ‘we can help you, we know our ingredients, and we understand your needs. We can be the extra R&D department you do not have in house’.”