Innovating for people and planet

Our mission to discover the wonders of whey and milk is an ambitious one. It takes us to places we haven’t been before. But that is what is needed if we want to be truly innovative – impacting people around the globe and our planet.

Meaningful, value-adding innovation is evident in our mindset and approach. When we develop new products, it is only the beginning of the journey. We explore a challenge from every angle to find the right properties and functionalities you need from whey and our milk powder solutions.

We have created a world-class Innovation Centre by linking innovation, supply chain, and commercial processes.

Our Values

R&D values

We have a set of values which describe our innovation capability.

Openness

Openness is key in our partnerships and the way in which we share knowledge. Our innovation mindset is one that believes anything is possible. We are passionately open to exploring new ideas, new technologies and new applications. We know it is essential to share information and scientific interpretations with others. So we are also open to collaboration across industries and sectors and between different disciplines of science.

Courage

Courage is about entrepreneurship, leadership, and heavy investment. We constantly challenge the boundaries of fractionating and modifying the constituents of whey and milk. Our people possess an entrepreneurship attitude and a fighting spirit that refuses to back down in the face of adversity. With this mindset, we have the courage to go first, to explore new ways and to test and apply the latest scientific findings – even if it means we might fail.

Perseverance

Perseverance describes the sort of unrelenting scientific mindset that has to be there, because in this industry, nothing great gets created without thousands of hours of effort. But it also describes our company’s long-term focus. It has taken time, numerous trials, failures and successes to get to where we are today – building our extensive knowledge of whey-based ingredients and milk powder solutions.

Ability

Ability is about having the right resources in place. We are about 85scientists and technicians using our innovation centre resources We’ve specified the very best, state-of-the-art facilities and equipment throughout our innovation centre. We have the space and the facilities that enable inviting multiple partners to work with us. And we are extremely close to the value chain - located near to the source of raw materials and Danmark Protein, our flagship production plant.

Value-adding innovation video

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Watch the video to better understand how we work with research and development.

Our science areas

FOOD CHEMICAL SCIENCE

To decipher and document chemical composition and changes of our ingredients by employing world class analytical methodologies

Compositional understanding
Molecular changes
Enabling technologies

FOOD MATERIALS SCIENCE

To elucidate and exploit the underlying mechanisms that govern dairy component functionality to catalyse new ingredient discovery

Food matrix functionality
Taste, texture & appearance
Powder functionality

FOOD PROCESS TECHNOLOGY & CONTROL

To increase efficiency, identify new opportunities for fractionation and processing, and minimize environmental impact via mechanism-driven process and technological understanding

Process Analytical Technology (PAT)
Process technologies
Cleaning & sustainability

NUTRITION RESEARCH

To improve life-long nutrition and to alleviate disease progression through nutritional solutions

Gut Health
Metabolic Health
Muscle Health
Brain Health

Nutrition science across Arla Foods Ingredients

Our scientists are highly educated, experienced researchers within multiple fields of nutrition and health. We adhere to established codes of ethics and conduct nutrition and health research using valid and state-of-the-art methodologies.

Working with us provides, for example:

High-quality pre-clinical and clinical evidence demonstrating effective and safe use of our ingredients in relevant target populations.
Scientific documentation, ingredient knowhow and dedicated support to help meet product documentation demands.

Learn more here.

Capabilities

Welcome to the Innovation Centre at Arla Foods Ingredients, an experimental innovation powerhouse where we discover and deliver all the wonders of whey and milk.

Here, we research and develop new products to promote better nutrition & health, functional benefits and more sustainable solutions.

It is a centre for the latest and most advanced dairy technology, enabling us to develop more robust, gentle and sustainable processes with world-leading standards for food safety and quality. Together with industry partners, universities and customers, we use the centre to discover, fine-tune and rapidly deliver on ideas in close collaboration with our colleagues in supply chain and commercial functions.

Our innovation centre

Located right between the raw materials source and Danmark Protein, our flagship production plant in Denmark.

We chose this location because of the burning need for superior nutritional ingredients which require an ability to quickly and effectively take good ideas to market.

It is designed to give an impression of experimental space, of processes being developed and refined. It is about taking ideas from the lab to the pilot plant to the production plant.

World-class pilot facilities

Our state-of-the-art pilot facilities make it possible to conduct small-scale trials in an environment mimicking production. These trials are essential to support new product development and production.

We test new processes on a large scale in the pilot production before committing to more significant investments at the production sites.

This means we can go to market faster, make beginner mistakes without disrupting existing production, and test new products at a lower investment.

Our State-of-the-art pilot facilities

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Multidisciplinary laboratories

In our multidisciplinary laboratories equipped with the latest technologies, we work together to find, explore and unearth new ingredients backed by science.

Our spacious and open laboratory space allows us to use in-house state-of-the art technologies and equipment in a dynamic environment that promotes collaboration.

Essentially, we work together in multiple research areas/disciplines providing the basic scientific knowledge required to bring new products to market.

Our application centres

We run high-tech Application Centres in Argentina, China and Denmark. In Denmark, the centre is located right beside our head office.

Our highly flexible, small-scale equipment can be rapidly adjusted to simulate specific production processes. This means we can carry out fast and effective application trials, dramatically shortening the time to market of new products.

Often together with dedicated customers, the application centre makes it possible to test ingredients in final applications such as cheese, yogurt, beverages, protein bars, etc.

Learn more

How we innovate

How we Innovate

Innovation at Arla Foods Ingredients can be described as “the practical implementation of new, good ideas in a way that creates significant value”.

Three phases define our innovation process:

Discover where we come up with the core idea and assess its potential
Develop where we refine the processes for the new ingredient, and
Deploy where we optimise and scale the ingredient in production.

More about our core innovation process:

Discover In Discover, we define, document and deliver knowledge-driven ingredient discovery, enabling technologies, and health benefits – and we do that through high-quality research. We work at the beginning of the value chain – we explore!

Develop In any Innovation department, it’s important with a strong connection to the business, but for new product development it is crucial. This is one of the key tasks in our Develop function.

Deploy Deploy is the department in Innovation closest to our Supply Chain. We work on technology, improving processes, doing pilot trials, and start-up productions. We focus on quality and generating the data needed for making robust processes – and we focus on optimising our processes and testing new technology.

Our innovative mindset has led us to discover many wonders of whey

Our wonders

Open innovation

Open Innovation

“Open innovation” is part of our way of innovating.

It’s a lot about partnerships.

It’s about connecting with the best researchers, technology suppliers or customers.

To maintain the highest levels of innovation, quality and commercial applicability, we connect with the best of our customers, tech suppliers and research experts. And we focus on the most promising projects.

We partner with 3 groups:

The first is universities, and their students/PhDs, such as Copenhagen and Aarhus universities in Denmark, or UC Davis in the US. This keeps us at the forefront of fully understanding and documenting our products and processes. The facility is a perfect set up for students to discover the wonders of milk and whey ingredients. If qualified, the experiments can be further developed in bigger scale through trials and processes in the adjacent pilot plant installations.

The second group comprises technology suppliers - around filtration, heat treatments, chromatography or similar. We want to be in the front of the best technologies giving us the best products and processes, and pushing for more sustainable solutions.

And last, but certainly not least, our food and medical industry customers, both large, mid-sized and small. Customers with great ideas and opportunities, for which we find solutions together. Likewise, industry associations are essential partners in many of our open innovation projects.

How to collaborate

Collaborate with us?

We try our best to be a competent and agile collaboration partner

If you’ve got a promising idea for a new ingredient or functionality, a new way of testing or producing milk-derived ingredients, we´re always interested in opening our doors and getting something started.