You’ve probably noticed that some people are more sensitive to taste and taste nuances than others. Did you know there is a special name for these people? They’re called ‘supertasters’. And yes, there is a scientific basis for their sensitivity. Here at Rousselot, we involve staff members who happen to be supertasters in the important work going on in our Global Sensory Program.

'Traditionally, the focus with regard to ingredients such as gelatin and collagen tended to be on properties like viscosity, density and transparency. There was less attention for sensory properties: gelatin and collagen were used as ingredients, which meant that the flavor and color of the final product were determined by other ingredients. Today, the demand for sensory consistency has gone up. Co-branding partners of ours, who repackage our ready-made collagen and collagen peptides under their own brands, need absolute certainty that their end customers won’t be in for nasty flavors, smells or colors.

Producing a genuine innovation usually takes a lot of time. And when you’ve finally nailed it, expect lots more time to pass before your market has embraced it, says Rousselot colleague Ivo Verheye, who was involved in the development of SiMoGel, an important innovation for the confectionery industry.

In the ingredients business, it’s quite common for suppliers to back up sales activities with some form of technical support, as it can be challenging for buyers to get the full benefit of the products they purchase. In the collagen business, this kind of support is less common, but at Rousselot, we insist on delivering the best ‘TS’ we possibly can.

On September 28 and 29, Darling Ingredients in Son (Netherlands) hosted an internal meeting with a unique purpose – welcoming and integrating 80 newly hired employees in Europe, across all the brands under the Darling Ingredients umbrella. This gathering served as an essential event to facilitate learning, network building, and alignment with the core values that are at the heart of the company's success.

Gelatin has a long and varied history in medicine, going back as far as 1834. Nowadays it’s a common material used in a number of pharmaceutical and biomedical applications around the world. With its well-established track record of versatility and reliability, it’s no surprise that gelatin is now playing an important role in groundbreaking regenerative medicine where, for example, it is used to produce hydrogels that support cell growth. In this article, we’re going to cover some of the key moments in gelatin’s pharma-medical history and take a look at how it’s used in pharma and medical applications.

Type the word ‘innovation’ into any search engine and the number of hits you get, within seconds, will exceed several billion. Innovation is a buzzword. So, if you’re as serious about it as we are, how do you take innovation to the next level? What does innovating innovation look like? How can we harness its power to add value in areas and in ways we are not yet today?

Gelatin is a safe ingredient of natural origin that has been used by humans for many centuries. However, despite its widespread usage, there are still some common misconceptions about gelatin. For example, some people think gelatin is a kind of fat, while many others don’t even know where gelatin falls on the nutrition table.

Gelatin’s special gelling and thickening jelly-like properties helped make gummy bears a blockbuster candy category after humble beginnings almost a century ago. But gelatin had to work harder to meet the particular nutraceutical and pharmaceutical manufacturing demands of the fast-rising functional gummies category. More on that in a second…