Capabilities & expertise
Product development
One of the main tasks of the product development team at our Food Protection Centre of Expertise in Denmark is to discover natural antimicrobial substances and technologies with the potential to protect food. In-house screenings of, for example, plant extracts or bacterial metabolites with antimicrobial or antioxidative effects are central to this work – along with our intensive monitoring and collection programme in collaboration with leading food microbiology research institutes.
At the core of our monitoring and assessment activities is our intelligent high-throughput assessment system where we assess a broad range of molecules, microorganisms or complex blends of substances for their food protection potential. Comparable to looking for a needle in a haystack, this process is dependent on high throughput automation. For this reason, we use a tailor-made robotic system.
As soon as antimicrobial candidates have shown their potential in vitro, they are subject to intensive study in diverse food matrices produced on our pilot plant, classified for biosafety level 3. This classification allows us to test our antimicrobial solutions and concepts against all relevant food spoilage and pathogenic microorganisms. This is the final in situ check before our new food protection solutions are handed over to the application teams.
Application development
Our food protection application teams are located in the United States, Denmark, Brazil and China. These teams offer competent application services worldwide:
- Customer support for the application of food protection ingredients
- Trouble-shooting and optimisation of food protection functionality
- Application development of existing products for regional markets
- Analysis of customer samples (active component, shelf-life problems)
- Analysis of competitor samples (active compound, chemical adulterants)
- Proof of concept by relevant challenge studies
