How to optimise new product development for food and drink

What are the critical stages of new product development (NPD)? And how can you optimise your NPD workflow? 

Food innovation specialist from the Medway Food Innovation Centre, Dr Parag Acharya, will share the key elements you will need to consider when developing a new food or drink product.

He will also explain how businesses can optimise their NPD workflow by making use of the technology and expertise available at the Medway Food Innovation Centre. 

This session will cover: 

• The different product development models – with examples 
• Stage gate of new product development – detail explanations and associated risks
• Agile workflow of NPD with some examples from the alternative protein sector
• Technologies and expertise available at the Medway Food Innovation Centre

About the speaker
Dr. Parag Acharya is an Innovation Growth Manager for Growing Kent & Medway. He works at the University of Greenwich as a Senior Fellow in Food Innovation. He has extensive industrial R&D experience in food and biotechnology sectors. Parag is leading the development of Medway Food Innovation Centre to support business innovation and deliver next generation technologies for alternative protein-based food. 

Parag previously worked for Unilever Food R&D and delivered patented products and sustainable process technologies for brands like Knorr, Hellmann’s etc. Parag’s pioneering work as Unilever science lead demonstrated the impact of the food processing on the flavour composition of plant-based food products via understanding process-microstructure-function inter-relationship. His research at Unilever also provided scientific insights on the causative chemistry of culinary flavour generation by unravelling how aroma generation can be controlled by the optimal processing of vegetables including utilisation of the agri-food by-products.

About the Medway Food Innovation Centre 
The Medway Food Innovation Centre is focused on strengthening the UK food and drink industries through cutting-edge research and transformative innovation.

With state-of-the-art technical infrastructure and business support tools, it aims to ensure the competitive advantage of the UK food and drink sector by providing advanced capabilities in alternative proteins, novel processing, flavour technology, new product development (NPDs) and sustainable packaging.

With leading expertise in food processing, plant-based food, algae biotechnology, food engineering, food microstructure, food safety, nutrition science, packaging and fresh produce storage, the Centre provides highly skilled technical support and future-fit R&D capabilities. It is based at the University of Greenwich in Medway, Kent.