Soufflet inaugurates world-class research facility

The Soufflet  Research and Innovation Centre and the Research Technology Building were inaugurated on 4 October 2012at Nogent-sur-Seine (about 100 km southeast of Paris).

Both centres are dedicated to the research and applications developed by OSIRIS and the Regional Biotechnology Research Programmes. The basic and applied in-laboratory research and screening stages are concentrated in the Research and Innovation Centre

The Research Technology Building is used for testing products on a pre-industrial scale, on one-tonne pilots. The role of the Technology Building is to validate, in large fermenters, the results obtained in the laboratory on a test-tube or several-kilo scale.

All in all, 3,400 square metres of space have been made available to the programme’s researchers and technicians. Soufflet is specialised in solid state fermentation.

“The combination of these two tools creates a facility for research into Solid State Fermentation that is the only one of its kind in the world”, says Jean-Michel Soufflet, Chairman of the Group’s Board of Directors.

Guillaume Garot, Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture, and François Drouin, Chairman of the OSEO, which funds the OSIRIS programme to the tune of €30M, came to meet Michel and Jean-Michel Soufflet at the Soufflet Group’s headquarters just before the official inauguration of its brand new research facility.

The Soufflet Group, experts in wheat and barley, is the biggest private collector of cereals in France, with 3,824,000 tonnes of cereals collected, plus almost a million tonnes outside France.