Around 180 research, creation, application, evaluation and process development staff work at the new €25 million centre, Research and technology originated there will be used in customer product development centres around the world, partnered by the Quest Chef Innovation Centre in the US.
The Creative Centre now houses, under one roof, state-of-the-art facilities equipped for research in a wide range of application areas - beverages, bio and organic chemistry, analytical R&D, microbiology and flavour delivery systems. It also includes a library and information management service.
Coupled with the expertise and creativity of Quest's application specialists, this allows Quest in the Netherlands to support and interact with regional technical centres in the US, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, Indonesia and Japan - creating a truly global reach.
The centre's beverage wet lab houses a complete range of practical beverage applications for still and carbonated drinks in PET and glass bottles.
"We have set out to create a very complete range of equipment in one place and believe this to be very unusual. This includes UHT equipment, hygienic filtered air filling and hot filling facilities," claimed Quest's director of flavour R&D, Eduard Poels.Complementing these practical facilities is an in-house data system dedicated to flavour and market product evaluation and sensory science. It will allow Quest teams worldwide to access panel studies, flavour evaluation and consumer testing data, sharing knowledge across markets and providing universal standards and calculations on flavour evaluation.
Meanwhile, a new fermentation lab is designed to deal with small-scale screening and up to 200-litre pilot tests. Quest will make use of it predominantly for flavour ingredients and fermented flavour blocks, for culinary and dairy applications.
"It gives us a bio-capability that means we can create natural ingredients and complex artisinal tastes for processed foods - increasingly important in low calorie foods to deal with weight management, for instance," said Poels.
Quest is one of the leading creative flavours and fragrances companies and is part of the ICI group. It has particular strengths in consumer insight, sensory design, creative and application skills.