Food

Luke offers high standard tailored research services and solutions for the entire food chain. Our focus is in sustainable food systems, product development, new protein sources and novel components and biomolecules, food safety diagnostics, and R&D services.

Sustainable food systems

Luke can put over 20 years of experience in development and applications of life cycle assessment (LCA) and other tools for environmental performance evaluation at your disposal. Our assessments are supported by large background and primary LCA data sets on food and fish products, agriculture, and forestry. We also have extensive expertise in benchmarking and comparing biobased materials and solutions against alternatives.

Novel components and biomolecules

Luke has a deep understanding of the characteristics of all types of biobased residues, side streams and products. We have the lab and pilot-scale techniques and technologies to extract, fractionate and convert side-streams to valuable products and components.

We research and develop new protein sources by, for example, breeding insects, cultivating mushrooms with new techniques, and processing vegetable and special crop raw materials. The new sources will mitigate climate change and can be produced near the consumers. Our research encompasses both food and feed raw materials.

Food safety diagnostics

We can help ensure food safety by analysing various risk factors in our advanced laboratory:

• chemical risk factors (e.g. toxins, heavy metals, antibiotics)
• microbiological risk factors ( e.g. bacteria viruses, mold, yeast)
• physical risk factors (foreign objects such as bone, glass or metal)

R&D services

The history of the food product from farm to fork needs to be thoroughly established in food research. Food companies can run tests or produce small quantities of their products in Luke’s pilot plant for dairy, vegetable and berry processing.

We can also offer studies on how different processing methods affect the healthiness and safety of food products. New products and processing methods can be developed and tested. What’s more, our laboratories provide analyses of chemical, microbiological and physical risk factors.