The Puratos group inaugurates its new Innovation Center
On September 10th, the Belgian Puratos group, partner in innovation for bakers, patissiers and chocolate makers in more than 100 countries, inaugurated its new Innovation Center.
The group's headquarters are located in Grand Bigard. Inspired somewhat by the pyramid at the Louvre in Paris the Innovation Center is constructed entirely of glass and allows a profusion of daylight to enter the building - ideal for evaluating the appearance of its bread, cakes and chocolate - consumers buy first with their eyes!
"Our centers are designed to promote dialogue with our customers and help them innovate" emphasises Eddy Van Belle, group chairman of the board. "These are areas that promote creativity and innovation. Everyone who is involved with innovation knows how difficult the process can be, and also the great amount of courage and ethics that are required to successfully carry out research, especially in food products. Courage and ethics are two values attributed to the mythical unicorn, which explains why we have chosen it as our symbol."
And Daniel Malcorps, group chief executive officer adds: "Our specialists place at the disposal of our customers everything they need to create new products and new concepts in terms of scientific knowledge, technical assistance, market trends, statistical data, marketing concepts and also workshops, with the very latest working methods equipment as well as meeting rooms and tasting facilities. Taste is, indeed, the most important criterion for a customer to repurchase a product, appearance being the first one. We therefore attach enormous importance to look and taste. The daylight, which the center enjoys, allows visitors to better judge the golden colour of a loaf of bread or a brioche, the brilliant shine on a fruit tart, or the elegance of a chocolate. As far as taste is concerned, we have created a sensory analysis laboratory and developed an original scientific approach which allows us to translate the subjective appreciations of tasting panels into objective terms. Like Lagardère, we are not waiting for customers to come to us, we go to them with our Sensobus, a double-decker bus, transformed into a sensory analysis laboratory with tasting rooms equipped with computers. Thanks to this mobile laboratory, we can talk to up to 300 people a day to better understand their expectations in the area of taste, wherever we want to in Europe. The complementarity of these two sensory analysis tools is an extraordinarily valuable source of knowledge for our customers.
Knowing that consumers are attaching more and more importance to the quality of their food and also being aware of the problems of obesity, diabetes and other cardiovascular problems in our society, some years ago, Puratos developed a concept called "Great Taste and Wellness" offering products whose nutritional characteristics meet the expectations of professionals and consumers today. Puratos researchers have, notably, created a bread based on dietary fibres in oats, which, consumed in the required quantities and at the desired frequency actually contributes to reducing cholesterol levels. This is a world's first! The positive effects of this bread have been checked by, conducted in various countries clinical studies over several months. Puratos also offers ingredients for cakes which are low in fat, chocolates with no added sugar as well as numerous other products whose philosophy is simple: it is not because a product is good for the health that it should be lacking in taste. Particular attention is therefore paid to the taste of these products, their nutritional benefits and their contribution to well-being.
"We wanted the architecture of this center to be totally innovative", underlines Eddy Van Belle, to demonstrate, if need be, that it is possible to innovate even in areas that are highly respectful of tradition. The positive reactions of our customers are the confirmation that innovation really is the driver of the economy. And thanks to it, lots of quality jobs are created, in research as well as marketing, sales and finance".