IN Brief:
- Panzani Solutions has opened the Durum Lab at its Gennevilliers site in France.
- Equipment covers raw-material analysis, rheology, texture, viscosity, water activity, pH, and shelf-life assessment.
- The facility will support bakery, biscuit, coating, breaded-food, pasta, and cereal applications.
Panzani Solutions has opened an analytical and application laboratory in Gennevilliers, France, to measure how durum wheat ingredients perform in industrial food formulations.
The Durum Lab strengthens the company’s existing Durum Center by connecting raw-material characterisation with finished-product testing. Its work will cover bakery, pastry, viennoiserie, biscuits, cakes, coatings, breaded foods, pasta, and other cereal applications.
Raw-material equipment includes a Chopin alveograph and an Inframatic infrared spectrometer, allowing flour strength, extensibility, composition, and related properties to be assessed before an ingredient enters an application trial.
Finished-product analysis uses texture analysers, viscometers, a Rapid Visco Analyser, Bostwick consistometers, water-activity meters, and pH equipment. The resulting data can track viscosity, softness, firmness, flow, stability, moisture behaviour, and shelf-life development.
Ingredient specifications cannot predict every outcome
Food manufacturers routinely approve ingredients against compositional, microbiological, and physical specifications, although those figures do not always explain how a material will behave on a production line or during storage. Two wheat lots can meet the same broad specification while producing different mixing, forming, coating, baking, or hydration performance.
Harvest conditions, variety, growing region, protein quality, milling, particle size, starch damage, and storage all influence functionality. Variation becomes particularly costly when it emerges during a full factory trial or after a formulation has entered routine commercial production.
The Durum Lab connects analytical results with application behaviour before customers commit to larger trials. Bakery developers can measure changes in crumb softness over time, while biscuit, pasta, and snack manufacturers can monitor structural stability, texture, and water activity.
Coating and breading systems place a different set of demands on ingredients, since viscosity and flow influence pumpability, pickup, coverage, and loss. Adhesion and moisture management then determine whether a coating remains attached during frying, freezing, reheating, and distribution.
Durum wheat is most closely associated with semolina and pasta, yet its colour, protein structure, texture, and processing behaviour give it wider potential. It can contribute bite, crispness, coating performance, structure, and visual differentiation in products outside traditional pasta categories.
Application evidence can also support cleaner-label development by showing what the base ingredient can achieve before gums, emulsifiers, improvers, or stabilisers are introduced. Removing an additive becomes more practical when the resulting changes can be measured across processing and shelf life.
The work complements other ingredient developments directed at specific manufacturing problems, including flour systems designed to correct over-elastic industrial dough. Ingredient suppliers are moving beyond broad compositional specifications towards application support tied to identifiable line and product behaviour.
Development cycles are becoming more demanding as manufacturers reformulate against cost, nutrition, ingredient declarations, sustainability, allergens, process yield, and shelf life at the same time. Laboratory screening can eliminate unsuitable options before production equipment is interrupted.
Application facilities cannot reproduce every industrial condition, since commercial mixers, ovens, fryers, extruders, coaters, and cooling systems create different shear, heat transfer, residence times, and scale effects. Their most useful role is to narrow the number of production trials and define the measurements required during validation.
Panzani operates three semolina mills in France that process approximately 470,000 tonnes of French durum wheat annually. Connecting that raw-material base with application testing creates a more direct route from crop and milling data into customer formulation work.
A longer-term performance database could identify which analytical measurements are most predictive for each application. Linking harvest data with finished-product results may allow specifications to become more precise and reduce the amount of corrective formulation needed when crops vary.
Climate and agricultural conditions are increasing the importance of that capability, since manufacturers still require consistent dough, coating, texture, and shelf life even when rainfall, heat, disease pressure, or fertiliser use alters the crop entering the mill.
Water activity and pH analysis can also support shelf-life and food-safety assessments by identifying how ingredient changes affect moisture availability and product stability. Those measurements become particularly relevant in filled bakery products, coatings, and intermediate-moisture foods.
Texture analysis adds another layer of evidence by replacing subjective descriptions with repeatable measurements of firmness, fracture, chew, elasticity, or crispness. The resulting data can connect formulation changes with target product attributes and manufacturing tolerances.
The Durum Lab gives Panzani a structured route for translating wheat variation into practical processing recommendations. Its value will emerge through fewer unsuccessful factory trials, more stable formulations, and tighter operating windows across different harvests and production systems.
