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Bringing innovative food products to market has never been more challenging. Food and beverage manufacturers must respond quickly to changing consumer demands while maintaining product quality, food safety, sustainability, and profitability. Whether developing alternative proteins, functional ingredients, nutraceuticals, starches, sweeteners, or new applications for food by-products, success depends on one critical factor: the ability to test, validate, and scale processes with confidence before making major investments.

Andritz helps food producers bridge the gap between innovation and industrial production. As a trusted long-term partner, the company combines process expertise, one of the industry's broadest portfolios of mechanical and thermal separation technologies, and world-class testing capabilities to help customers reduce risk, accelerate development and bring new products to market faster.

A cornerstone of this approach is its Food Innovation Xperience (FIX) centre in Waddinxveen, Netherlands. Designed around the philosophy of 'Imagine – Explore – Create,' the FIX centre provides food manufacturers with a collaborative environment where new ideas can be transformed into practical production solutions. Customers work side-by-side with Andritz specialists to conduct feasibility studies, evaluate emerging technologies, and optimize production processes under food-grade operating conditions. The centre features dewatering, extraction, milling, filtration, cooking, and drying technologies, allowing customers to validate concepts and generate reliable process data before moving to full-scale production. Additionally, expansion of testing capabilities in evaporation and spray drying is planned for 2027.

Beyond testing individual technologies, the centre enables customers to evaluate complete process chains for applications including alternative proteins, food ingredients, starch processing, fermentation products, side-stream valorisation, pet food and feed production. By combining customer product expertise with Andritz process know-how, innovative concepts can be developed faster, more efficiently, and with significantly lower scale-up risk.

To complement these capabilities, Andritz continues to expand its North American innovation platform through the Andritz Dedert pilot facility in Homewood, Illinois, USA. This advanced testing centre provides food and beverage manufacturers with pilot-scale drying, evaporation, extraction and separation technologies that support product development and process optimisation closer to their markets.

The Homewood facility is equipped with a comprehensive portfolio of thermal separation technologies, including spray dryer, ring dryer, falling film evaporator and forced circulation evaporator, allowing customers to evaluate product behaviour, energy efficiency, concentration performance and final product quality before commercial implementation.

Recently, the pilot plant was expanded with two exciting additions: the Andritz decanter centrifuge F2000 and the Andritz Turbex extractor. The food-grade decanter centrifuge enables pilot testing across a wide range of applications, including proteins, starch, yeast, food ingredients, oils, fats, biofuels and animal by-products. It allows customers to generate real processing data, optimise yields and verify product quality under realistic operating conditions.

The addition of the Turbex extractor further strengthens Andritz's capabilities in high-value ingredient recovery and food by-product valorisation. Utilising advanced high-shear cavitation technology, Turbex enables efficient extraction of valuable compounds such as essential oils, polyphenols, antioxidants, proteins, amino acids, alginate and carrageenan. Applications include the valorisation of citrus peels, spent coffee grounds, tea leaves, olive leaves, algae and many other agricultural side streams, creating new opportunities for circular food production and additional revenue generation.

Together, the FIX centre in Europe and the Homewood pilot facility in North America create a unique innovation ecosystem spanning mechanical separation, extraction, evaporation and drying technologies. From initial concept development to industrial-scale production, Andritz provides the expertise, technologies and testing infrastructure food manufacturers need to innovate with confidence.

Bring your products. Bring your ideas. Bring your challenges. Together with Andritz, you can develop the next generation of food and beverage solutions and transform innovation into sustainable commercial success.