Top Editors ... Partners in projects

Title: Partners in projects
Date: 02/01/2007
Autor: By Mike Spear

Equipment manufacturers are reaping the rewards
of working collaboratively with end users and ingredients
companies to develop new products and processes

When Baker Perkins first started working with ingredients companies some five or six years ago to improve its range of confectionery process equipment, it was as APV Baker, part of the large Invensys group. Now with new owners since earlier this year — and rejoicing in its old, but never really forgotten name — the company sees no reason to change a way of working that has brought benefits to all concerned.
“We feel it’s important to be able to demonstrate to our customers the kind of product that can be made with our equipment,” says marketing manager Keith Graham. “A lot of companies we work with, especially the smaller ones, are looking for help with product development. But rather than just restrict that help to the equipment, we decided to expand it into ingredients, which are after all a significant part of any development programme.”
The outcome of that decision was the collaboration first with Palatinit of Germany, on a sugar-free candy using the ingredient company’s Isomalt sugar replacer, and then with Swiss-based Firmenich for their flavours and colourings products. “Both projects have been successful,” said Mr Graham, “as we’ve been able to promote our equipment not on the basis of the usual type of engineering features, but more on the basis of ‘this is what one of our machines can do for you’. By working with the likes of Palatinit and Firmenich, we are now in a position to give our customers the whole story: these are the ingredients, this is the equipment, all you need to do is make the product and sell it.”
An example of this synergistic approach is the innovative ‘gum to mould’ technology developed jointly by Baker Perkins, Firmenich and the leading gum base supplier Cafosa, based in Barcelona.
This technology allows confectionery manufacturers to deposit chewing gum and incorporate it into candies and lollipops to produce multi-coloured and multi-shaped products with a gum centre. As Mr Graham explains: “The traditional methods of gum production involved either pressing or  sheeting and extruding in some way. With depositing you get more flexibility to do stripes or swirls, or to even put the gum inside a candy shell.”
The result of a three-year development programme between all three companies, the technology features a range of depositor designs, including ServoForm universal plants that enable production of the full range of chewing gum and gum/candy products on one line. Between them, the companies can offer complete solutions, including product and process development and equipment from ingredient handling through to packing.
Baker Perkins has, however, not been the only part of Invensys APV to benefit from collaborative ventures. According to APV’s vice president for technology, Paul Skudder, “We are always looking for novel new technologies that can utilise APV’s manufactured components.” On the dairy side of the business this approach has recently brought two technologies to market that Mr Skudder believes could turn out to be the most successful example of collaboration the company has known.
Introduced at this year’s Anuga FoodTec exhibition in Cologne, Germany (see FBI, June 2006), APV’s new LeanCreme process for low fat cheese was the direct result of work initiated at the Weihenstephan University of Applied Science in the Bavarian city of Freising. There Dr Heuss and his research team had developed on a laboratory scale a method of converting whey protein concentrate into a fat replacer that, as Mr Skudder explained, can be used to produce half-fat cheese that actually has a taste and texture like full fat cheese.
“We immediately saw there was some commercial opportunity there, and so very quickly did some scale-up work (at APV’s Innovation Centre in Silkeborg, Denmark) using some of the fundamental technology Dr Heuss had developed,” said Mr Skudder.
The end result is the LeanCreme process, which combines ultrafiltration — for the production of the whey protein concentrate — with a special shear agglomeration system (similar to a scraped surface heat exchanger but with specific design features to produce a fairly high shear at 75º to 85ºC) to produce a microparticulated whey that has sensory properties more akin to full fat products. “The surprising thing is that the mouth thinks the protein is fat,” said Mr Skudder. “It’s not a taste as such, more a perception given by the creamy texture of the 5 micron sized particles.”
The microparticulated whey is incorporated into cheese milk either to produce low fat cheese with the taste of full fat cheese, or to make full fat cheese with a creamier texture. Since LeanCreme first came to market towards the end of last year, its success has surprised even APV.
“Because the quality of the cheese is so high, we’ve already sold six plants. Never in APV’s history have we sold so many plants of the same technology in such a short period of time,” said Mr Skudder.
Not far behind in terms of commercial success, though, is another cheese process jointly developed by APV and the French ingredients company Ingredia. With one plant already sold to China and others destined for the Middle East and Turkey, APV believes the process — for both fresh cheese and semi-hard pressed cheese — will appeal to developing countries, allowing them to make better use of their fresh milk supplies, or even do away with fresh milk entirely in remote areas.
“The objective of the soft cheese process, is that we reduce the size and extent of equipment required in a dairy by blending (Ingredia’s Promilk) high casein milk protein powder with the cheese milk. And there is no whey produced, which is the biggest benefit. With the hard cheese process we’re actually producing cheese from powdered ingredients and fat so, in parts of the world with little infrastructure, producers can still make Gouda, Edam, Cheddar type cheeses in a totally unconventional way,” explainedMr Skudder.
Wild-Indag Process Technology is another company that unveiled new technology at Anuga FoodTec. This was its IPS system, a combination of ohmic heating with microwave technology. Although this was largely developed within the company, German-based parent company Rudolf Wild and sister US company Wild Flavors have subsequently signed agreements with the speciality chemicals company Cognis to develop new products and systems.
A particular focus of the collaboration agreement will be in the beverage, nutritional bars, sweets and ice cream industries.
Under the framework of the co-operation, Cognis products such as emulsifiers, compounds and functional ingredients will be incorporated into Wild’s flavour systems and fruit preparations. As part of the agreement, the companies will set up joint technical project teams. Norbert Weitkemper, Cognis’ head of business development for nutrition and health, commented: “The combination of Wild’s formulation expertise and Cognis’ broad range of ingredients is a perfect strategic match. As a team we will be able to develop and market new solutions effectively and cover a wide range of consumer needs.”
United Biscuits also recognises the value of teamwork when it comes to developing equipment for use in its factories. A few years ago it helped with the development of the ThermaFlux device, which measures the total heat and humidity conditions inside baking ovens. Although proven on UB plants, this heat flux datalogger has subsequently been commercialised by instrument company Digitron. UB’s engineering development specialist Jeremy Bagley worked on that project and explained the company’s thinking behind such collaborative ventures: “These days many companies don’t have the resources to develop technology completely in house, so you have to accept the fact that you won’t have exclusivity, but you will have it first. And because you and the equipment manufacturer are effectively sharing something of the risk, it reduces your development costs.”
UB is currently working with instrument company NDC Infrared Engineering on another, undisclosed project, while NDC itself has recently announced a new on-line analyser developed exclusively for volume biscuit manufacturers. The BG710 generates highly accurate real-time measurements of the moisture content of biscuits in the cooling section after they leave the conveying oven. On a typical production line, the instrument would make over 50 measurements per biscuit, using noncontacting near infrared technology combined with a high speed gating system.
The concept of collaboration is not restricted to commercial companies of course. A case in point is the Food Chain Centre of Industrial Collaboration, based at the University of Leeds, UK, and part of an £11million (€15.4 million), three-year investment on the part of the regional development agency, Yorkshire Forward, to get industry and regional academic institutions working together. Commercial director of the Food Chain CIC is Dr Graham Clayton who gives as an example of the centre’s work a collaboration with the Newcastle-based Protensive, a company that has in turn commercially developed the SDR spinning disc reactor following its original development at the University of Newcastle. The SDR was first developed for, and has been tried and tested in, the chemical and pharmaceutical industries where it is held up as a prime example of the chemical engineering principle of process intensification.
In a development process that has now come full circle — from university to commercial production for the chemical industry, to university again and hopefully on to the food industry — the SDR has been shown by the Food Chain CIC to be capable of producing full flavour salad creams and mayonnaise in minutes rather than the hours of conventional production. Mr Clayton says a sensory panel assessment found the perception of consistency and creaminess to be the same for both SDR and commercial mayonnaise samples.
Collaboration clearly comes in many guises, but when successful, the end results should always be the same: long lasting benefits for all concerned.

This article was reproduced with permission from Food & Beverage
International (copyright Haydon Jackson Publishing Ltd)