Olam SVI Unveils Innovation and Quality Center for Product Development

FRESNO, Calif., Aug. 27, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Olam Spices & Vegetable Ingredients ("Olam SVI" or "the Company") launches its Innovation and Quality (IQ) center at Company headquarters in Fresno, Calif., consolidating its research and development teams for dehydrated vegetables, frozen vegetables, tomato products and spices to one central location. The IQ will accelerate the development of value-added finished products that deliver on taste, functionality and clean processing by leveraging the expertise and ingredients across Olam SVI's entire portfolio.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130827/PH69682-a )
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130827/PH69682-b )

With close proximity to the Company's Agricultural Research Center, the IQ builds upon Olam SVI's command of the full supply chain by linking seed breeding and product development with its operational base for sourcing raw materials and maintaining quality assurance.

"Through the IQ center, we can fully integrate product lines and elevate our offering from high-quality commodity ingredients to value-added formulations that include finished sauces and salsas," said Siva Subramanian, Vice President of Innovation and Quality. "It is specially designed to facilitate learning and collaboration with our clients' R&D and quality teams, external laboratories and universities engaged in research and processing applications."

The IQ center consists of a product development kitchen, food chemistry laboratory and microbiology laboratory. The commercial kitchen allows for prototype development based on customer requirements and bench-scale testing of ingredients through baking, cooking, freezing and batch pasteurization. Measurement capabilities within the food chemistry lab include physical and chemical analysis, and chromatographic techniques to analyze color, texture, taste and quality parameters, ranging from simple moisture to complex flavor component analysis. The bio-safety level-2 microbiology laboratory is a central preventive and cause analysis resource for the mitigation of potential hazards in products.

Olam SVI controls the entire supply chain from origin to market, growing and sourcing quality vegetable and spice ingredients. This level of insight allows the company to meet changing consumer tastes through product innovation while providing accurate supply forecasts, proprietary market insights and unparalleled traceability for global food companies. The company has direct grower relationships and processing capabilities in major producing countries and leads the industry with its sustainable practices.

For more information, visit Olam SVI.

About Olam Spices & Vegetable Ingredients
Headquartered in Fresno, Calif., Olam Spices & Vegetable Ingredients (Olam SVI) is a top global supplier of garlic, onions, capsicums, tomatoes, spices and specialty vegetables. The company has mastered the full supply chain from source to market, growing and sourcing the finest raw materials in vegetable and spice ingredients with operations in the U.S., China, Egypt, India, Peru and Vietnam. As the only food company with energy audit practices, Olam SVI leads the industry in sustainable operations, processing technologies and farming practices. The company produces about four percent of the world's tomatoes and is the largest tomato exporter in the U.S. Its more than 50 years of conventional seed breeding for crop optimization is being applied in agricultural communities around the world. Olam SVI is a subsidiary of Olam International, a leading globally integrated supply chain manager and processor of agricultural products and food ingredients. For more information, please visit olamonline.com/products-services/spices-vegetable-ingredients.

About Olam International
Olam International is a leading globally integrated supply chain manager and processor of agricultural products and food ingredients, supplying various products across 16 platforms to over 12,300 customers worldwide. From a direct presence in more than 65 countries with sourcing and processing in most major producing countries, Olam has built a global leadership position in many of its businesses, including Cashew, Spices & Vegetable Ingredients, Cocoa, Coffee, Rice, Cotton and Wood Products. Headquartered in Singapore and listed on the SGXST on February 11, 2005, Olam currently ranks among the top 50 largest listed companies in Singapore in terms of market capitalisation and is a component stock in the Straits Times Index (STI), MSCI Singapore Free, S&P Agribusiness Index and the DAXglobal Agribusiness Index. Olam is the only Singapore firm to be named in the 2009, 2010 and 2012 Forbes Asia Fabulous 50, an annual list of 50 big-cap and most profitable firms in the region. It is also the first and only Singapore company to be named in the 2009 lists for the Global Top Companies for Leaders and the Top Companies for Leaders in the Asia Pacific region by Hewitt Associates, the RBL Group and Fortune. More information on Olam can be found at www.olamonline.com.

MEDIA CONTACTS
Roxana Janka, Phelps
Email; 310-752-4485

Andrea Gaitan, Olam SVI
Email; 559-446-6449 

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SOURCE Olam SVI