Bühler Food Innovation Center, Plymouth, Minnesota

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The Bühler Food Innovation Center was opened in May 2012. Image courtesy of Buhler Inc. The facility is located in Plymouth, Minnesota, US. Image courtesy of Buhler Inc. The extrusion line of the innovation centre includes bulk packaging. Image courtesy of Buhler Inc. The Food Innovation Center demonstrates various food processing equipment and options available with Buhler. Image courtesy of Buhler Inc. The Buhler Food Innovation Center is designed to allow innovations and processing of different food products. Image courtesy of Buhler Inc. Switzerland-based process engineering specialist Bühler has opened a new Food Innovation Center in Plymouth, Minnesota, US. Operational since May 2012, it is the first Buhler facility of its kind in the country. The food-grade processing facility is designed, maintained and operated under the specific sanitary standards stipulated by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The innovation centre demonstrates the various food processing equipment and options available with the company. It consists of different processing laboratories, quality observation and conference rooms. The food facility, located near Minneapolis, was designed by Krech, O’Brien, Mueller & Associates (KOMA) Building work was carried out by PCL Construction, regular contracting partners of KOMA. Buhler is involved in the production of technologies and services for foods and advanced materials. The company also opened a new 12,000m2 speciality equipment manufacturing factory in Joinville, Santa Catarina, Brazil, in May 2012. The facility produces dryers and grain processing equipment, including oil and rice millers, and conveyors. The Minnesota food innovation facility is equipped with state-of-the-art processing equipment to facilitate numerous food processes and innovations. The equipment includes a Sanimix batch mixer (MRMA), POLYtherm preconditioner (BCTC-10) and POLYtwin 62mm twin-screw extruder (BCTG) capable of operating at a rate of 100 to 1,000kg/h. The length to diameter ratio of the extruder is 20L/D, with an option for additional lengths. The food centre is equipped with the company’s proprietary AeroDry high sanitation conveyor dryer system. The gas fired dryer has a single-pass conveyor, two-zone design with cooling system. The AeroDry conveyor has an enhanced sanitary design and allows process trials. The extrusion line includes a raw material handler, dryer, extruder, grinder and bulk packaging units. It also has a hammer mill and bulk packaging equipment, with space for additional installations based on customer demand. In June 2011, the global life sciences and materials sciences company DSM opened a new nutrition innovation centre in Parsippany, New Jersey. The facility is designed to facilitate processing of different food products and innovations. These include direct expanded products such as high protein, fat, fibre products; nutraceuticals; non-typical commodity ingredients; co-extruded products such as filled centres and coloured centres; third generation collets such as flatbreads; inclusion and topical pieces; breadings and new product innovations. The Food Innovation Center provides food-grade equipment, basic physical analysis, private conference rooms, customised customer training and extrusion workshops, support for sourcing ingredients, electronic data collection and WiFi. Operations can be scaled to larger quantities and global support. It also supports non-standard process concepts. The centre performs inspection and certification of gluten free, organic and allergen-free foods and has the capacity to conduct limited non-food and market trials. The development is non-competitive and confidential. The Bühler Food Innovation Center is located close to analytical laboratories Merlin Development Labs, R-Tech, MVTL Laboratories and Medallion Labs. It is also near custom packaging service providers ProAct, RytWay and Innovative Packaging Solutions. Buhler has its base in approximately 140 countries with a total workforce of about 9,000 people. Minnesota has been the US headquarters of Buhler since 1957. The Plymouth innovation centre is the result of Bühler’s Food Safety Initiative, which promotes dialogue and innovations with customers to comply with FDA guidelines. The Food Innovation Center at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, is a food business incubator programme. The Food Safety Dialogue enables the company to understand safety requirements, issues and challenges in the marketplace. Buhler collaborated with customers, who gave interviews and feedback, to design and develop the AeroDry conveyor dryer. The company plans to collaborate with customers, industry partners and scientists to realise technologies for food safety. Buhler also operates a laboratory to develop innovations that are later scaled up to commercial products.

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