Ardent Mills celebrates grand opening of its innovation center

Ardent Mills, a flour milling and ingredient company, said it hosted the grand opening of its state-of-the-art Ardent Mills Innovation Center (AMIC). Located at the company's Denver headquarters, the AMIC — believed to be the only one of its kind in North America — includes:

A flour research room that showcases Ardent Mills’ industry expertise and unique small-scale milling equipment used for milling flour from a variety of hard and soft wheat.

An R&D applications lab that provides the setting, resources and expertise for working side-by-side with customers to help turn inspiration into innovation in the commercial product development realm.

An analytical lab where Ardent Mills’ team of experts conducts wet chemistry and dough rheology testing to help the product development cycle run smarter and more efficiently.

A bake Lab for experimenting with the baking process using refined and whole-wheat flours and creating a variety of breads.

A culinary center for developing culinary gold standards to support customer innovation, create new ingredient applications and serve multiple industries such as retail and foodservice.

Dan Dye, Ardent Mills' CEO, and Bill Stoufer, the company's chief operating officer, spoke to the crowd of customers, vendors, employees and journalists assembled for the grand opening. Kent Juliot, vice president, research, quality and technical solutions, was on hand to answer questions about food safety and research, the company said.