Rendering excellent business support to customers in APMEA

Chr. Hansen celebrates the 2nd anniversary of its Industrial Technology Center (ITC) in Singapore.

“Located in the heart of our APMEA region (Asia-Pacific, Middle-East, Africa), the Singapore ITC serves as the ideal and convenient spot for support to regional customers and distributors. When we inaugurated the ITC in April 2010 we expected it to become the main setting for product development, innovation and knowledge-sharing between Chr. Hansen and our customers in this rapidly growing region. This is indeed the case today, two years down the road,” says Christian Kühl, newly appointed APMEA Regional Vice President, Chr. Hansen.

Top-notch facilities
The Singapore ITC has been constantly upgrading its services and facilities in order to further optimize its support to regional food manufacturers.

“We have a state-of-the-art pilot plant to support new product innovations and we make technical development in our ITC laboratory. We offer our services for trial runs in dairy as well as food and beverage applications, catering to customers testing all types of ingredients: Cultures, enzymes, probiotics, and natural colors. We are able to replicate industrial processing methods; we do light and storage stability studies, and we can even develop actual product prototypes and incorporate creative concept designs,” explains Mun Hay Tang, Singapore ITC Manager.

The Singapore ITC staff has been organized in a way that provides maximum value to APMEA customers. “We have Regional Technical Industrial Managers working closely with our customers, offering their expertise in applications, formulations and trouble shooting. We have set up divisional Business Development units to anchor corporate business strategies regionally. Our Regulatory Department works closely with customers on product legislations and our Marketing Department further enhances the customer partnership offering its assistance in new product concepts, branding and marketing tactics,” Mun Hay Tang explains.

Full-service support
“Many food ingredient suppliers do not have the strength and resources to support its customers as we do. Today we are way more than a supplier of ingredients. We offer full-service support to our customers and as the leading expert in the field we have the technical know-how required for food manufacturers to launch successful products in the region. We aspire to be the ideal working partner in innovation and to create new markets within the food industry in APMEA,” concludes Christian Kühl.