Providing Solutions
From start to finish, MGP converts grain and other natural raw materials into high quality products for a host of commercial applications. Serving the food industry for the better part of our history, we have built an impressive portfolio of specialty proteins and starches, enabling us to bring a multitude of innovative solutions to the table. But we don’t stop there. Through ongoing development of new products and applications, we are continually adding more goodness to food. In all of the areas we serve, we are committed to supporting our customers' innovations the best way possible by helping create better products for consumers and the environment.
Food Ingredient Technology
Today's consumers want nutritious foods that not only complement their desire to maintain healthy lifestyles, but also taste great. MGP continues to develop ingredient solutions that enhance nutrition delivery as well as total product quality.
Backed by teams of food and grain science experts, our specialty starches and proteins can help make our customers' products better by providing health and wellness benefits while also improving functionality and sensory appeal, such as taste and texture.
Innovation at MGP
MGP views innovation as the conversion of ideas into value. It’s important to link the intellectual event (the concept or the idea) with the commercial reason for being (creating value).
New products developed through R&D are not the only innovations available to us. That is how a lot of people categorize innovation, but for MGP, this classification is too limiting. Innovation is broader than that. First, there are many ideas or concepts in addition to new products and processes that can be implemented to generate new value for customers and other stakeholders.
Second, innovation is an activity that is focused on filling customers’ needs. The process incorporates intellectual work, development work and commercial work so that we are focused on truly satisfying customers at the outset.
Third, innovation is an active and company-wide effort. Converting an idea into value takes energy and effort and it is successful only when a customer benefits from the final delivered product.
Other factors also sustain an innovation culture. There is individual initiative, which encourages people to identify opportunities and create solutions. This is coordinated action, which encourages people across a variety of functions like R&D, manufacturing and sales, to assist each other with projects. In many ways, factors like these are prevalent in the business culture that exists at MGP – a Company that values individual effort and insight along with shared effort toward creating value built on innovation.
MGP’s commitment to innovation is a hallmark of the Company’s legacy. All of our products were new at one time and those that remain are ones that enable us to create value. When considering product line opportunities and various business model opportunities, our future has tremendous potential for profound innovation.
Technical Innovation Center Enhances Product Development Capabilities
MGP’s Technical Innovation Center in Atchison houses 11 laboratories, a state-of-the-art culinary kitchen, 19 offices, and two conference rooms. This facility, opened in 2007, includes protein and starch research labs; applications labs for bakery, meat, prepared foods, and distillery products; and sensory testing, instrumentation and analytical labs. All of these are equipped to effectively support and accommodate a full range of research, product formulation and training activities related to our ingredient technology and alcohol business unit platforms.
The Technical Innovation Center allows us to leverage our experience, know-how and research capabilities as a developer of naturally-derived ingredient solutions. It provides great opportunities for us to conduct practical development for the next generation of innovative ingredients; create formulations and conduct applications work in support of new product development and customer-based projects; present hands-on seminars for MGP personnel and our global distributors and customers; and host and work directly with customers in providing solutions to their product, R&D and product development initiatives.
Our Innovation Partners
Innovating today and in the future must be far more collaborative than it has been in the past. Most companies have embraced a more open innovation structure and process over the last two decades and university researchers have almost always operated in a collaborative manner. The reasons are simple: breadth and speed. Even the largest research organization has only a small fraction of people and ideas available and ideas are the source of innovation. The only way to accelerate progress is to harness the power of far more people and groups in a well-organized collaborative manner.
MGP’s innovation process is built on the premise of screening ideas from many different sources, pursue early stage R&D work with the best and most fastidious individuals and organizations and focus our internal resources on late stage development and commercialization. We have a number of collaborative R&D efforts underway that harness world-class academic talent, our commercial know-how and capabilities, and internal and external funding resources. We continue to make progress on a variety of food, beverage and industrial ingredient fronts that would represent progress in value generation for MGP, our customers and the agricultural economy.