From concept to consumer: How flavour collaboration accelerates innovation at Glanbia
Consumers increasingly expect more from the products they buy. They want higher protein, added functional ingredients and cleaner labels, but they also expect great taste. Helping customers deliver both is the focus of Glanbia's Innovation and Collaboration Centre in Montreal, Canada, where Foodarom, part of Glanbia, brings vast flavour expertise to customer innovation.
The centre specialises in flavour innovation, bringing together application specialists and flavour chemists to help customers transform nutritional concepts into finished products ready for market. As Senior Application Specialist Kateryna Lyashenko explains, the centre is designed to be much more than a laboratory.
"Our Innovation and Collaboration Centre gives customers the opportunity to work alongside our team, explore flavour solutions together and solve formulation challenges in real time," she says. "By developing products side by side, we can significantly accelerate the path to market."
For many customers, the nutritional brief is already defined before they arrive. They know how much protein, caffeine, electrolytes or other functional ingredients they want in their product. The challenge is turning those ingredients into something consumers genuinely enjoy.
"Functional ingredients often bring flavour challenges of their own," says Kateryna. "Our role is to design flavour profiles that work with those ingredients, delivering products that taste as good as they perform."
Many functional ingredients bring naturally bitter or astringent and lingering flavours, called off notes. Rather than trying to completely hide those characteristics, the team often selects complementary flavour profiles that work with the ingredient. For example, a slightly bitter premix may be paired with grapefruit or cranberry notes, where a touch of bitterness is expected by consumers, creating a flavour profile that feels more natural and authentic.
Flavour innovation is about much more than technical performance. It's about creating the signature taste experiences that define a brand and delight consumers. By bringing together flavour creativity, formulation expertise and a deep understanding of consumer preferences, the Montreal centre works with customers to develop products that stand apart in the marketplace, adding the distinctive "wow" factor that elevates a good product into an unforgettable one.
That collaborative approach extends beyond product development. The team doesn’t simply create a flavour solution, it helps customers become more fluent in flavour. During collaborative workshops, customers learn to distinguish between flavour profiles and describe them with greater precision. Instead of simply asking for a “stronger” strawberry, for example, they learn to identify whether they are looking for a more fruity, lactonic, green, sweet or jam-like profile with cooked notes. This shared flavour vocabulary helps Glanbia develop products more accurately while giving customers the confidence to communicate flavour requirements more effectively across future innovation projects.
The customer experience doesn't stop with flavour. Working closely with Glanbia's protein and premix teams, the Montreal centre can develop complete product concepts using ingredients sourced from across the portfolio. Customers benefit from an integrated approach, combining nutritional expertise with tailored flavour solutions in one development process.
Innovation is also guided by insight. Foodarom's marketing team, part of the broader Glanbia network, provides insights into emerging consumer trends, helping customers stay ahead of changing preferences while continuing to meet demand for natural, clean-label products.
One example of this collaborative approach is the development of ready-to-drink creatine beverages. The project brought together expertise from multiple Innovation and Collaboration Centres, with knowledge shared between US, Canadian and European teams. By combining ingredient expertise, flavour development and regional consumer insights, the teams were able to create flavour solutions that could be adapted for different markets while overcoming the technical challenges associated with creatine stability.
For customers, one of the greatest advantages is the opportunity to work directly with Glanbia's experts onsite. Instead of waiting for samples to be shipped back and forth, customers can evaluate dozens of flavour variations during a single workshop, making decisions immediately and dramatically reducing development timelines.
"Our goal is to help customers create products consumers will come back to again and again," says Kateryna. "By bringing the right expertise together in one place, we can solve flavour challenges faster and help customers launch products with greater confidence."
As part of Glanbia's global Innovation and Collaboration Centre network, Montreal demonstrates how close customer collaboration, technical expertise and connected innovation are helping transform nutrition into better products that meet both consumer expectations and market demand.