KANAGAWA PREFECTURE, JAPAN — DuPont Nutrition & Health plans to open an innovation center in Kanagawa Prefecture later this summer. The center will assist customers based in Japan and Korea that primarily are in the bakery, beverage and dairy industries.

The center spans almost 700 square meters. A bakery lab will feature equipment for making various bread and rolls, steamed cakes, and donuts. The dairy area will be used for making yogurt, fermented drinks and ice cream. Stability tests in the micro-testing lab will be conducted on the enumeration of probiotics with prototypes of customers’ products formulated with probiotic strains from DuPont Danisco. Customized system blends may be created in the dry blend lab with a granulator, compressed tablet machine and revolving pan.

“This innovation center is designed to give our customers a deeper involvement in the development process, which will help us deliver the exact solutions they’re pursuing in a much shorter time span,” said Kobus de Klerk, global innovation leader for DuPont Nutrition & Health. “The face-to-face interaction will help us improve relationships with our customers and provide them with the full benefits of DuPont’s cross-functional solutions and our complete range of ingredients.”

DuPont Nutrition & Health is a DowDuPont Specialty Products Division business.