AAK to Open New Innovation Center in Richmond, California

AAK, a New Jersey-based ingredients developer, is opening a new innovation center in Richmond, California, later this year, to scale up production of partially hydrogenated oil-free and plant-based ingredients.  The company said the goal is to better serve bakery manufacturers especially following the recently revoked GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status of PHOs (partially hydrogenated oils) by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  

Anker Fog, business development and marketing analyst of AAK, noted his team uses a co-development approach to develop value-added vegetable oils.  “Instead of getting an off-the shelf product that can go into anybody’s warehouse and into any applications, we work with our customers hand-in-hand to make sure these ingredients, whether it is palm or coconut oil, are customized and perfect for their products.  For bakeries, we are looking at how different oils affect different applications, such as cookies and muffins because they require different kind of fats,” he said.  

According to Fog, vegetable oils are only a small part of the company’s efforts to capitalize on the growing popularity of the plant-based movement.  AAK’s new innovation center will house a bakery lab and will also focus on developing dairy-free ingredients.