Located at the Givaudan Woodlands site in Singapore, the Protein Innovation Centre is jointly run and supported by both companies and is connected to a network of R&D Innovation Centres in Switzerland and hubs across the region to enable global plant-based product development.
The Protein Innovation Centre in Singapore is open for food processing companies, start-ups and university researchers from across the Asia Pacific region to co-create plant-based food. The Centre combines the pilot technology of Bühler’s extrusion and processing equipment with Givaudan’s culinary facilities and flavor, taste, ingredient and product development.
The facility has a pilot scale wet and dry extruder, a product development kitchen, storage facilities, meeting amenities and a viewing area where visitors may tour the 400sqm facility and view live demonstrations.
At the center, customers can develop products suitable for Asian culinary applications at scale. The facility can produce up to 40kg of plant proteins an hour and features dry extrusion, as well as a newer wet extrusion technology that delivers a fibrous structure more akin to muscle, and higher protein content as compared with dry extruded products.
Monila Kothari, APAC president, Givaudan Taste & Wellbeing, said, “We are proud to be part of a partnership that will contribute towards a sustainable food future for Singapore and the APAC region. Through the Protein Innovation Centre, we aim to create an ecosystem that supports start-ups and food businesses in an environment of co-creation.
"The centre will provide them access to the expertise, networks and technology required to create authentic plant-based protein alternatives that meet consumer needs and expectations. By bringing flavour solutions that are vegetarian, vegan, plant-based and natural, as well as technologies such as wet extrusion to Singapore and the region, we are helping to make plant-based foods more delicious, authentic and accessible to business and consumers. We are excited to open our Centre in Singapore, a country that is a hot bed for foodtech innovation.”
Ian Roberts, chief technology officer at Bühler, said, “Great tasting and sustainable protein alternatives are an important contributor to feeding 10bn people sustainably by 2050. The changes that need to happen to our protein value chains prior to that are so deep, they can only be achieved if the various partners of the food ecosystem start working together today.
"The Protein Innovation Centre that we open today with Givaudan at the core of Southeast Asia’s vibrant food ecosystem, is a step towards achieving our vision of a collaborative and sustainable future of food. The Protein Innovation Centre will not only enable the development of more plant-based protein products across Asia, it will also ensure delicious products can be scaled to the production volumes required to create a positive environmental impact on our food chains.”
