When food companies have questions, the University of Nebraska Food Processing Center has answers.

The center connects food processors big and small with university research and resources.

"We assist businesses with market research, business planning and advertising," said Ed O'Neill, the center's assistant director. "Our product development group formulates new products while our pilot plant group works on applied processing projects."

The center has five pilot plants available for product and equipment tests.

A company that makes meat seasonings worked with the center to develop a marinade with the potential to increase meat's shelf life. Working with Food Scientist Susan Cuppett and Lab Manager Dianne Peters, the company identified spices with antioxidant and antimicrobial properties. This allowed the company to create a marinade without chemical preservatives that was as good as or better than those on the market, O'Neill said.

"The Food Processing Center ties its projects to researchers' expertise," said Cuppett, an Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources scientist. "This particular project allowed me to use my strength in research on natural antioxidants and apply it to a real-life situation."

Cuppett said this type of industry interaction also helps researchers.

"Working with clients through the center lets us know where the industry is going, what people are thinking about and what problems may be present so that we can fill in the gaps with research," she said.

"We're on the cutting edge of science. This allows us to see where science can fit in industry."

Through the Food Entrepreneur Assistance Program, the center provides resources and expertise to help entrepreneurs launch safe, successful products.

"We had this great idea but didn't know what to do with it," said James Gustafson, whose company, Tenback, in Lincoln, worked with the center.

Tenback produces a liquid coffee concentrate called PurJava. The center helped Tenback work through details necessary to get PurJava on store shelves, he said.

"The center helped us decide whether or not to use a chemical preservative, identified stores that might want to carry our product and showed us how to price our product so that we could make money," Gustafson said.

The center also kept Tenback from wasting money on ideas that wouldn't work.

"We were thinking of putting PurJava in a 750-milliliter wine bottle but later learned that we needed to make a smaller, more concentrated product," he said. "Without that guidance, we could have spent thousands of dollars on bottles that couldn't be used. The Food Processing Center enabled us to find all of the little things we needed to make our product unique and viable."

Warren Nelson of Valhalla Bee Farm in Lincoln had a recipe for a creamed honey spread and wanted to fine-tune the product.

"In one of the center's pilot plants, we learned how to adjust our recipe to go from a small batch to a large batch, which can be tricky because you don't just multiply the ingredients. It goes by weight," he said. "We wanted to use all natural flavorings and colors and a certain type of glass jar. We were able to find distributors of the products we needed through the Food Processing Center."

The center helped Nelson avoid potentially expensive labeling mistakes. "Their know-how was a tremendous time and money-saver," he said.

Steve Taylor, head of the food science and technology department and the center's director, said the center is an invaluable resource for the food industry.

"Through the Food Processing Center, we can draw from the vast reservoir of knowledge in the university and transfer the know-how to the private sector," he said. "This is the kind of help food companies need to get their problems solved."

– Heather Corley

Food Scientist Susan Cuppett rubs different herbs on meat in her lab. Through NU's Food Processing Center, Cuppett used her research expertise in natural antioxidants to help a food company identify spices with antioxidant and antimicrobial properties. With this help from the center, the company developed a marinade without chemical preservatives.

Laurie Keeler, Food Processing Center general manager of pilot plants, uses a piston filler to put barbecue sauce in jars. The center's five pilot plants are available for product and equipment testing. The center connects food processors small and large with university research and resources.