Cereal Partners UK

Most of us enjoy a bowl of crunchy, crispy breakfast cereal to kick start the day. What we don’t usually think about is the science and technology that goes into making our favourite cereal the right texture, consistency and flavour. That’s where The University of Nottingham plays a key role in one of its research partnerships.

Cereal Partners Worldwide (CPW) is a joint venture between Nestlé and food giant General Mills. Cereal Partners UK manufactures a range of breakfast cereals under the Nestlé brand name, including Shreddies and Shredded Wheat. CPW has been working on a number of research projects with the University for several years and a partnership, based on a mutual benefit and understanding, is established.

“In a nutshell, breakfast cereal fundamentally depends on starch and Nottingham has a world-class capability for studying starch,” explains Dr Peter Ashby, Director of Research and Development at Cereal Partners UK. “Starchy products fall into two states known as glassy and plastic, with glassy being a dry, breakable product and plastic being a bendable, less brittle product. It is not generally appreciated that for some crops such as rice or maize there are many different varieties just as there are many different kinds of apple.  We need to characterise the ones we deal with so we can find matching properties in other parts of the world.

“Staff at Nottingham have a really deep understanding of the chemistry and physics of these products and an unparalleled knowledge of the glass and plastic states of starch.”

Materials Scientist Jeremy Hunter from Cereal Partners UK has been working with research staff from the Division of Food Sciences at the University on a series of projects to help with one of the company’s most important issues – the local sourcing of the right type of grain.

“Grain is very different all over the world, and it’s only through research and analysis that we can source the right type of grain for our products to be manufactured locally,” says Jeremy. “What we have to do is establish the basic properties we need in grain – the first hurdle is to be able to produce anything at all in our factories – then we can essentially fine tune it to get the right flavour and texture.”

Some of the main work that the company is working on with the University is known as rapid viscosity analysis, which helps to build a ideal model for the grain as it cooks. The company has installed a rapid viscosity analyser (RVA) at its research and development offices in Hertfordshire, and staff and students from the University have played a key role in setting up, and developing, this important piece of equipment.

“Dr Sandra Hill visited us to help us with the development of the RVA, and gave us some extremely helpful advice about how to use it and really get the best from it,” continues Dr Ashby. “We also had a student who worked with us for three months on the RVA – and any problems we encountered were smoothed out using the experience and expertise from Nottingham. The instrumentation available at Nottingham for fundamental starch analysis is excellent.”

“We’ve worked with the University at lots of different levels: as an industrial partner in a consortium and by employing both PhD and sandwich students; something we’re very keen on. We particularly enjoy working with international students – after all, we’re an international company and to have any real global credibility we need to have international staff.”

“What we’re looking for in our industry are good scientists who can apply their knowledge and turn it into meaningful material. This is something we get from Nottingham – they’ve got good people and good equipment” says Dr Ashby.