Numico Research is the Corporate Research Organisation for Numico and interacts closely with the production sites of the company.
Part of the Infant Nutrition group is the group Production Infant Milk Formula (IMF). In this group seven supply points in Western Europe are gathered, that are all dealing with spray drying. All supply points are supported by the Centre of Excellence IMF on product and process related items.

Role in the project
Both the Numico Centre of Excellence IMF and Numico Research will take part in this project on agglomeration. Numico will play a major role in industrial validation of the Design Tool to be made and in determination and optimisation of the relation between agglomeration and product functionality.

Facilities
For this project Numico offers facilities on lab-scale, pilot plant scale and in several production plants (with different type and capacity of spray-dryers). Besides production equipment, most relevant analytical equipment is available (e.g. SEM, Malvern).

EDECAD-project team
Carla Buijsse (M.Sc., Ph.D.) is leader of Work Package 7 and staff member of Numico Research at Wageningen, The Netherlands.
Antoon Janssen (M.Sc.) is staff member of the Centre of Exellence IMF at Cuijk, The Netherlands.
Thom Snoeren (M.Sc., Ph.D.) is head of the department Technology Development & Quality at Numico Research, The Netherlands.
Gert Hols (B.Sc.) is head of the Centre of Exellence IMF at Cuijk, The Netherlands. Operators and analysts will participate in production trials and validation experiments. Most of the above mentioned participants have many years experience and a broad knowledge on IMF production.