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Success Stories: Tate & Lyle
Setting up in Lille Region means finding the right assistance for the success of your company, such as:
Tate&Lyle, European Innovation Center
The Tate&Lyle European Innovation Center based in Lille: A factory for innovation!
“You could also call it an innovation factory,” says Paul Cornillon, describing the Lille Innovation Center, 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 convey to our customers: ‘Yes, you can do this in your own factories’.”
Paul Cornillon is R&D Director for Food & Industrial Ingredients, Europe, Middle East, Africa. “Research and Development in 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; * 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’.”
Tate & Lyle is a world-leading provider of distinctive, high quality ingredients and solutions to the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, cosmetic and other industries operating from 45 production facilities around the world.
The Lille innovation center, inaugurated in September 2008, includes laboratories and pilot plant facilities for customers. It focuses on developing new ingredients in the field of wellness and nutrition, catering for beverage, dairy, bakery, and convenience food. The Wellness & Nutrition Center leads the development of Tate & Lyle’s European fiber platform, which supports the ENRICH™ service launched in early 2007. The center also specializes in application and development work for SPLENDA® Sucralose, hydrocolloids, carbohydrates, proteins and CORE™ ingredient solutions.
The choice of Northern France for its R&D Centre:
For Olivier Rigaud, Vice President of Food Ingredients, the decision was easy. Lille is a key European center for functional foods and ingredients and is home to the French Nutrition, Health and Longevity Cluster. This Cluster includes many internationally-renowned teams involved in research on cardiovascular health, obesity, immunity and nutrition.
Furthermore, foreign companies such as Tate & Lyle benefit from high-level assistance, NFX (Nord France Experts), the APIM (Lille Metropole Development Agency), Eurasanté (The Economic Development Agency focusing on Healthcare, Nutrition and Biotech activities in Northern France) and the French Nutrition, Health and Longevity Cluster have played a decisive role in the choice of this city.
