EUROPE – The French yeast manufacturer, Lesaffre has inaugurated a new Baking Center dedicated to serving industrial customers in the baking industry in Austria.
The company said the center will mainly focus on development of new products and processes to meet the growing demand for novel ingredients in the baking industry.
It further expands its service offering while opening up new market opportunities within Europe.
The new facility in Austria, which has been operational since early 2019, adds to a growing network of Lesaffre baking centres and will be the group’s first entirely dedicated to industrial customers.
The site is dedicated to the distribution of baker’s yeast and to the production of bakery ingredients.
“In this new Baking Center, suited to industrial scale pilot trials, we offer our customers and partners the possibility to carry out tests on our premises by simulating their own conditions and constraints, and without disrupting their productions.
“This will allow us to develop tailor-made solutions with them,” said Jérôme Lebriez, President of Oriental and Central Europe Area at Lesaffre.
The center houses an ultra-modern pilot industrial bakery featuring a dough preparation zone, shaping zone, cold treatment zone with a forced-air freezing cell, and a baking zone.
It is also equipped with a laboratory area where the company experts can carry out quality evaluations including shelf life, preservation, texture.
The investment reinforces Lesaffre’s commitment to developing innovative technologies geared towards delivering solutions to changing consumer preferences.
“Innovation is part of the company’s genes and will be one of the keys to meeting the many challenges of tomorrow,” said Antoine Baule, CEO of Lesaffre.
“We want to help our customers by codeveloping with them technical and industrial solutions that meet their own innovation needs.
“Setting up this Baking Center in the heart of a region that plays such an important role in the evolution of food trends is essential for Lesaffre.”
In July, the company bought bakery ingredients company Delavau Food Partners to expand in the North American market.
In the same year, it also acquired Italian biotechnology company Gnosis, specialized in fermentation-derived ingredients for the food and nutraceutical industries.
