Puratos opened its pilot bakery plant at its U.S. headquarters in Pennsauken, N.J. Developed in collaboration with AMF Bakery Systems, this facility is designed to accelerate innovation for commercial bakeries across North America.

The grand opening event, held on June 9, welcomed a group of guests, including Eric Dell, president of the American Bakers Association (ABA); Nicole Roberts, mayor of Pennsauken; members of the New Jersey Legislature; customers; members of the press; and executives from both Puratos and AMF. The event featured guided tours of the facility, live demonstrations of bakery automation, product tastings and interactive sessions displaying the innovation process.

“As part of our mission to help our customers be successful, we identified the need for bakers to accelerate the innovation cycle to respond to evolving consumer trends,” says Andrew Brimacombe, president of Puratos USA. “However, we see that line time and baking skills can be a constraint on innovation and recipe optimization in many industrial bakery environments. This new pilot bakery brings together the deep skills of a bakery ingredients innovator with a bakery equipment leader to provide bakers with a way to develop, optimize, test and scale products with speed and certainty, going from concept to commercialization in one visit. It will also support our customers as they seek to train their teams and build skills.”

The facility is located inside Puratos’ USA headquarters, just steps away from the company’s Innovation Center. This setup is designed to foster collaboration between Puratos’ technical baking team and its customers, offering direct access to a range of baking equipment, co-creation spaces and demo areas for hands-on training. This arrangement allows bakeries to test and refine recipes in a dynamic environment that supports rapid prototyping and innovation.

With equipment that mirrors real-world manufacturing, bakeries can reduce trial-and-error and line testing during product development and scale-up. Visitors can also participate in trend sessions, rooted in Puratos’ Taste Tomorrow consumer research, and leverage Puratos’ sensory capabilities to refine concepts with market feedback.

“We have a long history of strong partnerships aimed at advancing the bakery industry, including with equipment manufacturers,” says Pierre Tossut, global CEO of Puratos. “We are pleased to extend our partnership with AMF to develop this unique pilot bakery line in the U.S., allowing our customers to innovate faster. We will continue to develop our partnerships across the globe and look forward to extending further collaborations with equipment suppliers that move the industry forward.”

The facility is now open and available for customer collaboration sessions, innovation workshops and technical training, as well as project-based work around recipe development, ingredient replacement, cost reduction and process optimization. Just 30 minutes from Philadelphia Airport, the facility is convenient for visiting bakery partners, offering a fully equipped workspace complete with Wi-Fi, snacks and coffee to support working sessions.