Imagine the possibilities.
Our Innovation Centers are where creativity and food science make culinary magic happen.
Pioneering the Future of Cheese Ingredients
Innovation is at the core of everything we do. At Ornua Ingredients North America, we have a dedicated Research & Development (R&D) team that collaborates with food manufacturers to create cutting-edge cheese formulations tailored to their specific needs.
Our state-of-the-art innovation center allows us to conduct rapid prototyping, analyze functionality, and fine-tune recipes to ensure the best possible performance for our customers. We offer complete technical support and troubleshooting from benchtop to scale-up to tabletop. Our team offers access to current industry knowledge and expertise including market insights & trends, quality, sustainability and more. Whether it’s achieving a perfect melt for a frozen pizza, optimizing stretch for cheese sticks, or enhancing the creaminess of a sauce, our expertise turns ideas into marketable reality.
Our goal is simple: To help food manufacturers innovate faster, improve efficiency, and bring groundbreaking cheese-based products to market with confidence.
Key Capabilities
Key Research & Development capabilities include:
- Controlled Melt Technology – Ensuring consistency in heat-sensitive applications.
- Texture Optimization – Adjusting firmness, stretch, or softness based on product needs.
- Inclusions and Custom Flavors – Creating added value and unique taste profiles for
brand differentiation. - Nutritional Enhancements – Fortifying cheese with protein, vitamins, or specialty features.
- Dietary Requirements – Such as: reduced-, low- and fat-free solutions, gluten-free, Kosher & Halal, organic, or plant-based.
Research & Development
- Complete custom formulation capabilities
- Leading-edge ingredient and processing technology
- Food scientists staffed at facilities in
Minnesota and Wisconsin - Capabilities to replicate flavor of various
natural cheeses with desired functionality - Value-add / Recipe Optimization for cost
reduction of existing cheese products - Low water activity and shelf-stable
formulations - Product Development Support capabilities lets us collaborate with food manufacturers, create the products they need or co-develop solutions
- Rapid prototyping capabilities and knowledge base of hundreds of proven solutions and for improved speed to market
- Create product samples with different
characteristics for comparison - Manufacturability solutions to seamlessly integrate with your manufacturing processes and equipment
Bring Your Ideas to Life
Our Culinary Application Kitchen is designed to educate, inform and inspire our customers. We work with you in a hands-on development approach transforming functional cheese solutions into palate-pleasing entrées and food products. And we will prove it.
We focus on the experiences of both your production team and your customers, incorporating tools and methods that enable you to compare functionality and performance efficiently. The kitchen provides opportunities for real-world application of multiple solutions, discussing your unique application needs with our culinary staff and dairy processing experts to ensure your solution is optimized for your products, your processes and your customers.
Visit Our Culinary Application Kitchen
- Accelerate development with our team
- Work directly with our food scientists, formulation expert and executive chefs
- Test recipes in our well-equipped,
professionally-staffed culinary kitchen - Trial different cheese products, formulations, styles and flavors against your existing products
- Administer blind tests and focus groups
Let’s create something exceptional
Whether you’re seeking to solve a technical challenge for your recipe, looking for cost optimization in your ingredients, or are exploring your options for a new idea, we invite you to get to know what we have to offer.