Ohly, a leading global supplier of yeast-based ingredients and culinary powders, is pleased to announce the opening of their new Customer Innovation Center, located just outside Chicago, in one of the most active regions in the US food industry. The cutting-edge facility is designed to accelerate close collaboration with customers and partners through on-site concepting and solution development across the food and nutrition space. 

Fully equipped with a modern sampling lab and state-of-the-art test kitchen, the new centre stocks Ohly’s entire range of yeast ingredients and specialty powders to facilitate rapid testing and development. Ohly’s Customer Innovation Center boasts an array of commercial equipment to mimic industry processes, including combi-convection cooking, frying, meat processing, snack coating, and blast chilling. It provides a space where customers can work with Ohly’s application team on refining tailored recipe solutions and developing new ideas in line with the latest food trends. In addition, there is an analytical lab for testing the key parameters of ingredients and formulations, along with a suite of meeting and ideation spaces that allow for collaboration, training, and trend presentations. 

Aaron Rasmussen, Head of Global Applications, who led the build project, explained, “We are committed to working closely with our partners and customers. The new Customer Innovation Center is a purpose-built space that delivers an exceptional customer experience. We have assembled everything we need to quickly find the right product so that our partners and customers can bring new and exciting products to the market more efficiently.” 

Following a recent ribbon-cutting event for employees, the application team is now finalising preparations to welcome customers and distributors early in the New Year. Nancy Zacca, Taste & Texture Platform Director, added, “We are grateful to Aaron and his dedicated Application Team for making this possible. We look forward to welcoming our valued partners and customers to demonstrate the quality, versatility and impact of our taste improvement and flavour delivery ingredients. We are excited to see the innovative solutions that will emerge from this space.” 

About Ohly 

Ohly is one of the world’s leading suppliers of yeast derivatives and culinary powders for the global food, biotechnology, human, and animal health markets. Ohly offers a wide range of yeast specialties based on natural bakers and Torula yeast under the brands OHLY® and PROVESTA®. 

Under PRODRY®, Ohly offers a range of culinary powders that offer authentic and complex flavour profiles for a variety of applications like snacks and dry seasonings. 

The NEIVA® health and nutrition products, such as yeast powders, beta-glucans and functional lipids, provide solutions to support immune health and overall wellbeing. 

Ohly’s X-SEED® yeast-based bionutrients are a powerful tool for the biotechnology industry to achieve high yields, titers, and productivity in fermentation processes. They are a balanced source of complex nutrients and contain amino acids, peptides, vitamins, minerals, growth factors, and nucleotides. 

The company’s yeast-based specialty products under the brand OHLY-GO® are powerful feed materials that deliver better palatability and animal performance by improving health status, feed efficiency, and feed intake. 

Ohly is part of the ABF Ingredients group, which focuses on high-value ingredients for food, pharmaceutical, and industrial applications.