APC team up with Kraft Heinz
Heinz or Bachelors’ baked beans? It’s a never ending debate in houses up and down the country but for one research team in UCC, it’s all about Heinz for the next year.
APC Microbiome Ireland and the Kraft Heinz Company (KHC) have announced a new collaboration aimed at developing new natural cultures for food fermentations.
Fermented foods are created using controlled microbial growth, facilitated by microorganisms or microbial communities, usually in the form of starter cultures, adjuncts or probiotics.
The fermentation process helps prolong shelf-life, improve food safety and quality and increase the palatability of foods. It may also enhance the nutritional and functional properties of foods due to the transformation of substrates to bioactive end-products.
This collaboration plans to focus on a variety of these bioactive end-products and their applications in food systems.
APC Microbiome Ireland is a leading Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre based in UCC and Teagasc Food Research Centre.
The APC-KHC collaborative project will initially run for 12 months and employ a team of 4 researchers led by APC Principal Investigators Professors Paul Ross, Colin Hill and Catherine Stanton.
Professor Paul Ross, Director of APC Microbiome Ireland and leader of the new research collaboration, said: “We are very excited to partner with Kraft Heinz for this research collaboration. Research on fermented foods and culture metabolites forms part of the APC’s overall strategy to manipulate the microbiome of food for quality, safety and human health associated improvement. APC’s research feeds into industries such as human health, animal welfare, nutrition, infectious disease, infant formula and sustainability. APC is currently working on research projects with more than 30 companies.”
Hennie Myburgh, Head of R&D, Global Growth & Technology at Kraft Heinz said: “Partnering with APC Microbiome Ireland aligns with our new global technology strategy. As a company with a long history in fermented products, we are very excited by this collaboration with APC Microbiome Ireland as this partnership will further strengthen our research platforms, enabling the next generation of fermented products and ingredients. The technologies that will be developed together will align with the growing consumer demand for cleaner products. The output of this partnership will allow us to continue delivering novel, clean-label innovations.”