Puratos inaugurates new €15 million Inspirience Center

Nov. 10, 2104, Groot-Bijgaarden, Belgium – With the opening of its new 6,000-square-metre Inspirience Center in Groot-Bijgaarden, Puratos marks another milestone. As consumer needs and expectations evolve, customer needs change too.

Nov. 10, 2104, Groot-Bijgaarden, Belgium – With the opening of its new
6,000-square-metre Inspirience Center in Groot-Bijgaarden, Puratos marks
another milestone. As consumer needs and expectations evolve, customer
needs change too.

Puratos is dedicated to anticipating and responding to these changes worldwide through constant innovation. The state-of-the-art Inspirience Center provides a platform for innovation through collaboration that will enable Puratos to continue to support its customers’ businesses around the world in the bakery, patisserie and chocolate sectors.

Where experience and inspiration meet
The Inspirience Center is where inspiration and years of experience and product knowledge from all over the
world convene and are leveraged to create innovative bakery, patisserie and chocolate products and applications.

Puratos researchers work in tandem with universities, research institutes and suppliers to research and develop products for the future in which nutrition, taste and convenience are key drivers. Internal and external research teams interact and exchange knowledge in an environment where technologies and competencies criss-cross. A shared passion for innovation is the norm, but innovation is not a goal per se for Puratos: rather it is a way of addressing consumer and customer trends, staying close to customers and helping them grow their businesses.

Global and local interaction
The Puratos Group already has local R&D units in all of its 69 subsidiaries around the world. The Inspirience Center will develop innovative global technologies, which will then be rolled out and adapted accordingly by local R&D teams in function of their own market requirements. This global-local interaction and cooperation is vital for the successful development and implementation of new solutions for customers. As reliable partners in innovation, research and development has always been an important pillar for the company and its growth. The Puratos Group invests heavily in R&D: in 2013 this amounted to 2.5 percent of group revenues, a significantly higher proportion than is general for the food industry. The centre itself represents an investment of 15 million euros. Previously, Puratos also opened an Asian Development Center in China, which represented an investment of 3.3 million euros.

State-of-the-art laboratories
The Inspirience Center houses six laboratories, equipped with state-of-the-art material over an impressive space of 3,000 square metres. Each lab focuses on a different stage of the highly sophisticated and complex research involved in analysing and creating today’s food products.

Huge efforts have also been devoted to making the Inspirience Center’s offices and labs as environmentally
friendly as possible. A green roof helps modulate the impact of fluctuations in outside temperatures and slows
down water run-off. Automated sun screens reduce the impact of heat through luminous windows, which in turn reduce the need for additional lighting. Smart use of natural resources such as light, air and rainwater means lower consumption of water and energy and lower CO2 emissions. Even the ovens have been given their own insulated room to lower their impact on the air conditioning.

“We continue to invest heavily in R&D resources and infrastructures so as to be close to our customers and help them to further develop their businesses,” says Daniel Malcorps, Puratos CEO.