Nutkao inaugurate new Italian R&D centre

Nutkao – a leading Italian international contract manufacturing company that has been producing creams and chocolates for 40 years – has inaugurated the new “House of Dreamers” research and development center at its headquarters in Canove di Govone.

The project, conceived in 2020, which required an initial investment of 3 million euros from the company, is part of an innovative, production and distribution expansion plan launched in 2015 with the opening of the first plant in North Carolina (US) – for the production of creams for retail and industry – followed by the one in Accra in 2018 – where exclusively prime Ghanaian cocoa beans are processed – and continued with the latest acquisitions, in 2021, of Belgium’s Boerinneke and Sicily’s Antichi Sapori dell’Etna.

“House of Dreamers” has been conceived as the nerve center of research, development and application of the group’s products, which will thus be able to offer an increasingly complete and “on time” service to its clients: creation of “tailor made” formulations, applicable in a timely manner to each client’s production processes, controlling and monitoring every single phase.

Technological analysis solutions have been installed inside the laboratory, capable of simulating the entire production and logistics chain, from the creation of the “tailor-made” solution to packaging and shelf-life analysis.

Another novelty to improve the performance of the offered solutions is a new “Bean to Bar” production line designed by the company, literally “from the bean to the bar”: 7 systems closely connected to each other that, starting from the cocoa beans, allow them to create customised roasting profiles in order to maximise the quality of the Ghanaian bean, thus obtaining different flavour profiles.

The Application Center will also be equipped with an innovative cylinder refining line, an exact scale replica of Nutkao’s production facilities, to perfectly simulate the result of the tests as if they were carried out on its own production lines.

“Investing in R&D means for us to believe in growth and the future,” says the Group’s R&D director, Barbara Dellapiana.

“Thanks to this investment Nutkao takes another decisive step towards technological innovation applied to food, in order to offer customers an experience of collaboration and technical dialogue absent in the market to date. Our ambition is to enable our partners to arrive in the morning with the problem and leave in the evening with the solution. This will allow our customers a time-to-market service that is unmatched.”

With an area of 1,000 square meters, in the new R&D facility and laboratories, Nutkao’s experts will have tools to actively follow the process of product development, customisation and creation.

“The decision to invest came 2 years ago, in the midst of the pandemic and very strong market turbulence, so it was a very brave and visionary choice. We did not just take a normal approach in adding some more advanced facilities, we realised that what we do required more than that, and that is 3 investments in 1: the new research center, the new application center, and the new advanced analytical laboratories. Every ingredient, every product, every customer must have the utmost attention from Nutkao with respect to the quality we provide: only the right combination of these factors, mixed with sustainability and traceability, produces a unique and excellent result,” concludes Federico Fulgoni, Nutkao CEO.

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