R&D centre opened by DuPont in Kiev

DuPont Nutrition & Health has opened a new technical service centre to support dairy manufacturers in the growing Eastern European market. The centre specializes in optimizing starter culture performance in fresh fermented dairy production.

Yogurt and other fresh fermented dairy products are important drivers of the dairy market in Eastern Europe, where Euromonitor International forecasts value sales will grow 6% a year up to 2018.

Located in Kiev, Ukraine, the technical service center will focus primarily on issues related to bacteriophages. These viruses impact the acidification performance of yogurt starter cultures and are a common cause of production failures or product quality issues. The center will also work with basic microbial analyses.

“Efficient strategies against bacteriophage development are essential to ensure stable batch-to-batch production and premium quality products,” says Dmitrij Shulmeister, sales director SAFI South-Eastern Europe & Balkans, DuPont Nutrition & Health. “In addition to routine analyses of customers’ product samples, our application specialists can identify the optimum starter cultures for use in rotary combinations and provide prompt assistance when bacteriophage issues arise.”

DuPont has similar technical service centers in place in France, China and the US.