Product Development

The Food Centre is a leader in developing innovative food products and offers a variety of services for food and ingredient development.  With projects ranging from single products to a diverse product line, formulations from concept or reformulation of existing products, we can help.  Our clients are at various stages in their business, from start-up to multi-nationals.  We will customize our services to fit your needs.

• Are you an agricultural producer and looking for opportunities to expand your business?
• Are you an entrepreneur looking to pursue a new business venture?
• Do you have a family recipe that is sure to be a hit in the marketplace?
• Are you an existing business and looking to add to your product line or expand your market?
• Do you need to troubleshoot a problem with an existing product?
• Would you like to enhance your product and make it healthier?
• Are you an ingredient company interested in seeing how your ingredients function in a food product in order to sell your ingredients to specific markets?

Our expertise goes beyond the list above, with too many to list. New and improved food products and processes are our specialties. Whether it is a single service or a multitude of services, the product development team will work with the client to ensure that the product is market ready. We will evaluate the product for shelf stability, consistency, taste, texture, labelling and appropriate packaging. The Food Centre’s food scientists will work closely with you to perfect your formulation before it goes to production trial.

Check out some of our services in product development:

Nutritional Labelling

Having a nutrition facts table has never been more important to consumers than today. Regulatory agencies have made it mandatory for most food products sold in retail to have a nutrition facts table on their product label.

The Food Centre uses the Genesis software to generate and format regulatory-compliant nutritional labels (to Canadian, U.S. and other countries depending on your target market) for your packaging. If your product requires a health claim, our team can guide you in the process of assessing your formulation for nutrient content, function and dietary health claims.

Packaging Evaluation

Product packaging plays an integral part of the overall look of your product. The packaging not only has to be appealing, but it needs to meet consumer expectations for convenience and food safety.

What would be the best packaging to use for optimal shelf life and maintain quality for your product? The Food Centre can assist in finding the optimum and most cost effective packaging solution for your product.

Process Development

After a product has gone through the development stage, process developments are implemented. This stage ensures that the product characteristics do not change as it goes through the scale up process. The Food Centre’s federally inspected facilities are HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) recognized by CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency). We offer test production at lower volumes for initial runs.

Label Review

Not sure what should go on a food label? The Food Centre can assist you in reviewing your label to ensure that the label content follows food labelling regulations. Do you need a health claim? We’ll review to make sure that your product meets guidelines for the claim.

Shelf Life and Product Testing

Launch with confidence knowing that your product will be shelf stable and safe for consumers. The Food Centre offers various levels of shelf life testing; real-time and accelerated.

Our Food Testing Labs can test your product for micro-organisms and recommend a solution to keep your product safe.

Sensory Evaluation

Sensory evaluation is an important step in the product development process. This step involves a panel of individuals to taste the prototype on characteristics such as taste, texture, appearance, etc. Tests are conducted under controlled conditions. Resulting information is analyzed by trained scientists and used to improve the overall acceptance of the product being developed.

Sensory evaluation can also be used to evaluate and compare competitors’ products; evaluate a product throughout its shelf life; and identify how an ingredient substitute affects the current product characteristics.

Product Formulation and Testing

The Food Centre has the capability to help you determine the technical requirements for manufacturing a safe product. Home recipes will need some level of modification to adapt to commercial scale production. A team of food science specialists at Food Centre can help you modify your recipe while maintaining your quality standards and product characteristics.

Once your product is developed, the Food Centre has the facilities to help move you to scale up production. The Food Centre’s food scientists will work closely with you to perfect your formulation before it goes to production trial.

Ready to start your product development project?  Fill out our online Prospective Client Form to get started.