CHICAGO — Tate & Lyle officially opened its new Commercial and Food Innovation Centre June 13 in the Hoffman Estates suburb of Chicago. The 110,000-square-foot facility will serve as the global headquarters for Tate & Lyle’s Innovation and Commercial Development unit and as the North American headquarters of the company’s Speciality Food Ingredients division.

The facility includes laboratories for food science research and processing and for applications and technical services. Other facility features are a culinary demonstration kitchen, a suite of consumer insight and sensory testing facilities, pilot plant and prototype manufacturing facilities, and global communications capabilities.

“Our new center demonstrates our commitment to develop distinctive, high-quality specialty food ingredients and solutions for our customers across the world,” said Olivier Rigaud, president of the Speciality Food Ingredients division. “The center’s state-of-the-art facilities together with our highly skilled and experienced teams of scientists, marketers and product managers provide a unique combination to help meet our customer’s functional, formulation and nutritional needs, and to accelerate the process of bringing new products to market.”