Inside FrieslandCampina Ingredient’s New Applications Lab: Part 2

To better serve the evolving demands of the North American functional food and beverage market, FrieslandCampina Ingredients recently unveiled its new regional applications lab in Paramus, New Jersey.

In this exclusive interview, Nutritional Outlook, meets with Auke Zeilstra, Regional Sales Director for FrieslandCampina Ingredients, at the new facility to discuss how the new lab facilitates strategic, tailor-made co-creation over rigid, turnkey formulations. Zeilstra outlines the facility's technical capabilities across key delivery formats—including bars, ready-to-drink (RTD) beverages, and ready-to-mix powders—while highlighting how the lab is actively addressing major US market shifts. Specifically, the conversation explores how the company is leveraging its protein and prebiotic portfolios to formulate targeted solutions for active nutrition, muscle mass preservation, and the rapidly growing gut health needs surrounding the GLP-1 companion supplement space.

For more insights on the company’s ingredient portfolio and collaboration with brands, watch our interview with Idil Kavakli, Managing Director of FrieslandCampina Ingredients.

Sebastian Krawiec: Hello everyone. I am Sebastian Krawiec. I am here in Paramus, New Jersey at the FrieslandCampina Ingredients regional sales office. I'm talking to Auke Zeilstra, who is the Regional Sales Director for this office. Thank you so much for joining us.

Auke Zeilstra: You're welcome.

Krawiec: So we are here because you guys are unveiling a new applications lab, in this office. And so I wanted you to walk me through what the collaboration process looks like at the applications lab here, because that is ultimately the purpose of it, right, is to bring in clientele and develop products together. So what are the capabilities and what would that process look like?

Zeilstra: What we want to do is being in the same time zone, but also being in the same geography of where our customers, brand manufacturers play, being able to be more responsive to the needs and the demands that our customers have, being mindful of, let's say, sensory preferences in terms of taste, in terms of texture, in terms of format and being able, by being local close by in the States and Canada to our customer portfolio, being able to respond and adapt to that accordingly. So that could mean that we basically develop prototypes and demos here to inspire customers that actually trigger maybe a product development process at our customers.

Could also be that the customer already has a brief, has something broadly in mind, and that we help them with bringing that to life, playing with our dairy ingredient portfolio. But of course, in a food matrix, be it a bar, be it an RTD, be it a ready to mix, and being able actually in our lab here to bring that to life and also even work it into real life examples that we can check on shelf life stability that basically our customers can scale up and produce oncommercial scale.

Krawiec: So elaborating on that, I wonder if you can talk about what do you see as the advantages of collaborating with customers as opposed to creating turnkey, ready to market products?

Zeilstra: Yeah, yeah. Turnkey can of course, be very quick, but it's also fixed in the format that you offer to customers. And in the end, our customers are looking for tailor-made solutions that fit their brand portfolio, fit their R&D program. So whilst maybe tailoring it for customers together in our lab, be it co-development or even co-creation, that may take longer time, but in the end, that is also then fitting, let's say the customer's wishes in terms of specific needs they may have, specific requirements they may have, specific commercial elements that need to be adhered to, not to speak about maybe also shelf life stability and processing conditions that we can also, to a certain degree, mimic here in the application lab in New Jersey.

Krawiec:Elaborating on a previous conversation, walk me through exactly what kind of applications is this lab capable of creating, and what are the current market trends that are informing the particular applications that you're focusing on?

Zeilstra:Yeah, yeah. So the lab is really focused on the space of what we call performance and active nutrition. And it's a space which is rapidly growing also, especially here in in the US. And then think about all kinds of protein enriched products like your protein bar, ready to mix, ready to drinks, but also yogurts. And you can think about bites and basically also protein enriched snacks. And these would be the typical applications that we can support from our application lab here in, in New Jersey.

Looking at, trends, you could think about GLP-1. I mean, a lot of the people nowadays at GLP-1 are, of course, losing muscle mass and need highly nutritious food to make sure that muscle mass is being compensated for. That's also where proteins come into play. You can think there about whey proteins with very speedy amino acid release and therefore helping muscle recovery, but also caseinates, which have more a sustained amino acid release and can help your muscles grow overnight. Those would be the typical ingredients that we would work with when it comes to muscle recovery and muscle loss.

But another angle could be gut health in the same space of GLP-1 you see also a lot of people struggling with gut health issues, vomiting, nausea, etc. and that's where our portfolio of prebiotic ingredients can also help. So, for example, galacto-oligosaccharides, in which we are the market leader worldwide, can play in that space. You can also think about more hybrid, ingredients. And one of those is Fermentis. It's a unique blend of fermented whey protein with prebiotics, our GOS, and probiotic cultures fermented. And that helps basically both on the muscle axis as well on the gut axis. So it fits very well with, let's say GLP-1, but also people that regularly sport and are in need of both muscle recovery as well may face some gut issues by heavy sports exercise.

So those are the typical areas we look for, but because the lab is also so close here in the States, we keep an eye out and keep the radar out on what's playing here on the, on the US landscape in terms of trends, in terms of demands, and by being so close to our customers, we can pick that up and translate that into viable applications.