LENEXA, KAS. — Corbion celebrated the grand opening of its North American headquarters and lab facilities with a tour of the lab facilities for members of the media. The new applications and analytical labs as well as demonstration kitchen enables product development and testing across all the industries Corbion touches on.

“We constantly encourage our employees and our customers to ‘Keep Creating,’ because the world urgently needs better solutions to the challenges we face,” said Andy Muller, executive vice-president at Corbion. “The innovations we help create make a difference in the lives of people everywhere — people just like us. We try to merge our areas of scientific expertise with what we know and care about as consumers so we can develop solutions that make a meaningful impact for everyone, including ourselves and our families.”

The open workspaces empower innovation crossovers between teams and prevent silo-ing of expertise. For example, Kathy Sargent, strategic innovation director, bakery, Corbion, sees the new space and the capabilities it brings as an opportunity to refocus on innovation that fires on all the company’s strengths.

“We focused on freshness and conditioning for a long time, but I’m excited to bring the fermentation capability we have to bakery in a strong way,” she said. “Our expertise in lactic acid and fermentation isn’t new, but in this new space we can focus on innovation and customer solutions across departments. When we can find those synergies, it’s powerful.”

Corbion’s new bakery research and applications labs gives the bakery team and customers the tools to test its ingredients and customer formulas across a wide range of bakery applications: tortilla, bagels, artisan bread, pan bread and sweet goods. The lab has several different styles of mixers, including both batch and continuous, a fryer, and several different kinds of ovens. The company designed the lab to efficiently test across bakery products and mimic bakery processes from bench work to commercial production.

Corbion also showcased its expertise in bioplastics, meat, emulsifiers and its new analytical lab that can test raw materials, finished products and offers support to Corbion’s milling business.

The new headquarters also was designed to reflect Corbion’s focus on sustainability through clean energy, centralized waste management, and composting and recycling programs.