Three industry suppliers — Arla Foods Ingredients, PerkinElmer and Solazyme — each earned a 2014 Institute of Food Technologists Expo Innovation Award. The awards were handed out June 22 during the opening session of the I.F.T.’s Annual Meeting and Food Expo.
Arla Foods Ingredients, Basking Ridge, N.J., earned its Innovation Award for the development of its Nutrilac protein for acid whey. Acid whey is a byproduct of yogurt manufacturing and Arla’s ingredient allows dairy processors to turn the byproduct into a range of finished products.
“We’re immensely proud to win this prestigious award,” Torben Jensen, application manager for Arla Foods Ingredients. “Outstanding service and constant innovation are at the heart of everything we do. We strive to create solutions that will keep our customers ahead of the market, and if a solution does not exist, then we work hard to create it. Our Nutrilac acid whey process is a great example of how we put this approach into practice.”
PerkinElmer’s DairyGuard Milk Powder Analyzer applies algorithms to screen for known and unknown economic adulterants in milk as well as measuring for protein, moisture and fat monitoring. With offices in Waltham, Mass., PerkinElmer is a manufacturer of quality assurance testing equipment.
Solazyme, South San Francisco, Calif., earned its honor for the development of a high oleic, high stability oil that is sourced from microalgae. The oil may be used to replace partially hydrogenated oils and may be used in a variety of applications.
The I.F.T. Innovation Awards are handed out during the Institute’s Annual Meeting and Food Expo. Criteria to qualify for an award is a company must be an exhibitor at the expo and the product must have been introduced during the prior year. This year there were 27 entries in the Innovation Award competition that were reviewed by a panel of 10 judges.
In 2013, Innovation Award recipients included Glanbia Nutritionals, Fitchburg, Wis., for its Optisol 3000 egg replacement ingredient system; Nizo Food Research, Ede, The Netherlands, for its acoustic tribology sensory research; PerkinElmer, for the AxION DSA/TOF mass spectrometry system; and Tate & Lyle, Decatur, Ill., for its SODA-LO sodium reduction technology.
