Strategic partners in taste and texture

Danisco and Firmenich have entered a global strategic partnership that promises the food industry the combined benefits of their leading taste and texture expertise, including proactive innovation development.

The partnership agreement was launched when Danisco divested its flavour division to the Switzerland-based fragrance and flavour company, Firmenich, earlier this year. Since then, the two companies have been working on the detailed plans for operating the partnership in practice from 1 January 2008.

Chief sales and application officer at Danisco, Ole Søgaard Andersen and Don Hartman, Corporate Vice-President of Firmenich’s Flavours Division , are highly satisfied with the progress made so far.

Win-win situation

“This first and unique partnership between the innovation leaders in food ingredients and flavours is a “win-win” situation for our customers. It gives us every opportunity to provide complete food solutions while maintaining flexibility for our customers,” Ole Søgaard says.

“At the same time it is important to emphasise that our customers are free to choose the supplier or solution they want. But our strategic partnership is naturally expected to give our customers a range of benefits through enriched product knowledge and optimised solutions.”

The partnership includes a framework for joint development work, both on a proactive basis to bring innovations faster to the market and on specific customer requests. Danisco will also act as agent for Firmenich flavours in respect of selected markets and some flavour customers that previously had no relationship with Firmenich.

Groundbreaking development

Don Hartman believes that the innovation of high quality solutions will generally speed up our client’s development cycle.

“I expect the partnership to be a groundbreaking development for the industry and one that will set a pioneering direction. We have an excellent partner in Danisco and, together, we hope to build a new and improved model for the future” he states.