Unilever opens new R&D centre in Italy

23 Sep 2008 | News
Unilever opened a centre of excellence for Assembled Foods, a global development centre for products such as ready meals, salads, snacks and bakery goods.


Unilever opened a centre of excellence for Assembled Foods, a global development centre for products such as ready meals, salads, snacks and bakery goods.

The centre in Cisterna, Italy, will bring together all the company’s know-how of complex food products, such as the selection and protection of ingredients, downstream product assembly and freezing technology.

The 50 R&D staff at the centre will be responsible for developing convenient, tasty and healthy assembled food products. The brief is to use exclusive ingredients and culinary techniques to deliver restaurant quality convenience foods. The objective is to achieve step changes in taste quality, naturalness and nutritional value through innovative products and process design.

Cisterna will build towards a world-class technical capability in the assembled foods value chain – from raw materials to products. It will bring together all the technical know-how needed to make assembled foods: from raw materials to creative product formulation and design, to manufacturing and distribution to the shelf - around the world.

In addition the centre will work on freezing and downstream product assembly and product and process design, including the development of new proprietary technologies to increase quality, preservation and shelf life.


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