Latin America Food Innovation Center 

Opened in 2011, the Latin American Innovation Center focuses on food R&D in several areas. With 35 food scientists, the center’s focus is food research and applications development in the areas of bakery, dairy, confectionery, beverages and dressings, sauces and spreads. New product development, flavor creation, prototype elaboration, culinary development, product optimization and shelf-life tests will be are among the services offered.

Featuring multiple laboratories for customers in a variety of categories

The 20,000 square meter Innovation Center features multiple laboratories to serve customers in the beverage, baking, confectionery, convenience foods and dairy categories. It also includes a flavor and aroma laboratory, and an industrial lab to create and develop ingredients and applications for the paper, textile, corrugated and biopolymer market. The facility also enables activities including product sensorial analysis, prototype development, ingredient creation and evaluation, consumer testing, and food preparation and tasting in the culinary center.

Customers are invited to work alongside Cargill technologists at the center, which has been designed to ensure customer confidentiality. The center also will serves as a place for customers to conduct focus group discussions, validate product performance in culinary use and take steps that will speed their products to market while ensuring high quality.

Connecting food and environmental innovation

As a global agrifood leader, Cargill’s goal is to nourish people. Human food and animal feeds depend on clean water, soil, air and light. As such, the construction of the Innovation Center followed strict sustainability concepts in order to preserve local vegetation and topography. This state-of-the-art building technology will helps Cargill save 900,000 liters of water per year and reduce energy demand by about 22 percent, and potentially 40 percent on sunny days.