SINGAPORE – The APAC Protein Innovation Centre in Singapore has been officialy opened by Givaudan and Bühler and is expected to play a major role in accelerating plant-based product development on a global scale. 

Located at the Givaudan Woodlands site in Singapore, the Protein Innovation Centre is a first of its kind establishment leveraging the expertise of both companies to accelerate development of high quality plant-based proteins.

The facility will also be connected to a vast network of R&D innovation centers in Switzerland and key hubs across the region further enhancing its ability to accelerate development of plant-based proteins.

“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,” said Ian Roberts, Chief Technology Officer at Bühler.

The Protein Innovation Centre in Singapore will be open to food processing companies, start-ups and university researchers from across the Asia Pacific (APAC) region keen to co-create plant-based food experiences that do good and feel good.

The facility outfitted with a pilot scale wet and dry extruder, a state-of-the-art product development kitchen, storage facilities, meeting amenities to ensure a flawless end-to-end process of plant-based protein production.

Businesses will also benefit from support throughout the co-creation process, from raw material selection to product development and research, to application, flavor science, extrusion, and consumer testing.

At the Centre, customers can develop high-quality products suitable for Asian culinary applications at scale as the facility can produce up to 40 kilograms of plant proteins an hour.

  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, says: “Through the Protein Innovation Centre, we aim to create an ecosystem that supports start-ups and food businesses in an environment of co-creation.”

Kothari added: “By bringing flavor 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.”

According to Roberts, the the Protein Innovation Centre is a step towards achieving our vision of a collaborative and sustainable future of food.

 “Great tasting and sustainable protein alternatives are an important contributor to feeding 10 billion 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,” he added.

Singapore, where the innovation lab is being launched is referred to many as a core of Southeast Asia’s vibrant food ecosystem and rightly so as the city state became the first country in the world to approve cultured meat, among many other firsts in the novel food industry.

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