Takasago International Corporation this April opened the "Food Design Center," a new facility positioned to conduct trial production, evaluations and proposals of foods and beverages. The Center, located within the Corporate Research and Development Division (Hiratsuka City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan), is devoted to research into effective use of the flavors and food ingredients supplied by Takasago. The ultimate objective is to pursue ever-more satisfying tastes in beverages, frozen and regular desserts, confectioneries, milk products, ready-cooked foods and other products targeting the consumer market.

To house the Center, the two-story detached research building adjacent to the R&D Headquarters was given a major renovation, expanding the scale and upgrading the trial production equipment. Inside the new facility, which boasts total floor space of some 800 square meters, is an impressive range of equipment, divided into specific areas, for trial production of beverages, frozen desserts, chewing gum, candy, tablet candy, curry, ramen noodle soup, potato chips and various other products.

Researchers bringing specialized technologies to the job conduct the process of repetitive trial production and evaluations. The main consideration is to define the product formats most preferred by consumers, striving to design flavors and tastes capable of truly pleasing consumers. The kitchen area, stocked with full-fledged cooking equipment, also connects to open meeting space for use in providing more effective customer presentations and trial product assessments.

In addition to flavors, Takasago supplies coffee, tea, juice and a numerous other natural ingredients produced on the strength of its specialized technologies in extraction, concentration and other expertise. Besides paying key attention to consumer tastes, the company is also well versed in the discriminating product characteristics desired by customers, effectively applying its flavorings and natural ingredients to join with customers in identifying and resolving problems encountered at the product development stage.

The opening of the Food Design Center has expanded the Takasago capacity to apply its rich array of flavors in optimum fashion. The ability to perform this specialty evaluation and development work with even greater speed and efficiency will also spearhead major advances in product proposal proficiency. Over the years to come, the Center promises to serve as a pivotal base for cultivating and sharing innovative new technologies for flavors and food ingredients, one more phase of the Takasago quest to work through its support of enlightened product development to forge even stronger partnerships with its customers.