Puratos, a maker of bakery, sweet goods, and chocolate ingredients, announced the opening of its new pilot bakery plant at its U.S. Headquarters in Pennsauken, N.J. Developed in collaboration with AMF Bakery Systems, a global leader in bakery automation, this state-of-the-art facility is designed to accelerate innovation for commercial bakeries across North America.
The grand opening event, held on June 9, 2025, 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 new facility, live demonstrations of advanced bakery automation, product tastings and interactive sessions showcasing the collaborative 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, 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 new facility is located inside Puratos' USA headquarters, just steps away from the company's Innovation Center. This integrated setup is designed to foster seamless collaboration between Puratos' technical baking team and its customers, offering direct access to a range of cutting-edge 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 costly 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' extensive 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, 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 new 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. The facility is 30 minutes from Philadelphia Airport and has a fully equipped workspace complete with high-speed Wi-Fi, snacks, and coffee to support working sessions.
