Corbion, a low-key company responsible for food magic, is changing its ingredients

Why do cake mixes work? What helps create a stick of margarine? How does some frosting stay fluffy?

Some of that food magic happens partly because of ingredient research and production in Kansas City area facilities of Corbion, a Dutch-owned company that supplies ingredients to the commercial food chain.

The company, well known by its corporate customers — bakeries, beverage makers, meat processors and other food companies — is a behind-the-scenes mystery to most individual consumers.

An explosion in March at one of Corbion’s plants in Grandview put the company’s name in the news for a day. But for the most part, its presence in the area is so low-key that an October announcement that it would close its Kansas City, Kan., plant passed without local public notice.

Corbion is phasing out the 60-year-old plant in Kansas City, Kan., formerly known as Breddo Food Products/American Ingredients. The shutdown will eliminate up to 100 jobs by the end of this year, a result of a corporate decision to save $25.2 million in annual costs by consolidating its production of “dry blend” ingredients at an updated plant in New Jersey. It also made other realignments.

“This was a difficult decision, as this plant has been a staple of our organization for many years,” wrote Corbion’s chief executive officer, Tjerk de Ruiter, in the company’s 2014 annual report.

On the positive side, Corbion is upgrading the Grandview food ingredients plant that specializes in emulsifier production. That facility, operating under the Corbion Caravan name, employs about 100 workers and is recovering from the March explosion.

Cheri Tabel, Corbion’s manager of communications, said the company is working with a third party to investigate the cause of the night-shift explosion that blew out a plant wall and to make safety improvements.

Meanwhile, about 150 employees work at Corbion’s North American headquarters and innovation center in Lenexa. About 40 of them are scientists working in research labs on what might become the next big thing in baking, or meat processing, or beverage production, or any of the food industries Corbion serves.

The North American office opened in Lenexa in 2006, followed a year later by the innovation center, which expanded in 2014 to add a meat laboratory to its milling and baking research side.

Corbion also has another brand name company, Breddo Likwifier, in North Kansas City, where about 10 employees work in a business that deals in stainless steel blenders sold to the food industry.

Although unknown to most Kansas City area residents, Corbion says it’s the global market leader in the production of lactic acid and its derivatives. It’s also a leading producer of emulsifiers and functional enzyme blends, turning out biobased ingredients for food products.

Translated, that means its products include emulsifiers that stabilize the mixtures of products such as bakery batters, margarine and mayonnaise.

“When you’re baking at home, the lecithin in egg yolks is a naturally occurring emulsifier,” explained Jim Robertson, a Corbion product manager.

The plant produces additives that help large-volume producers achieve similar, consistent results. The company also turns out ingredients that add shelf life or preserve freshness.

While the Corbion name may not be familiar, the company notes that the Grandview plant, which began operations in 1968, has a 100-year corporate history in the Kansas City area, initially as the C.J. Patterson Co. and later as Caravan Products.

Caravan Products merged in 2006 with American Ingredients, becoming Caravan Ingredients, with headquarters in Lenexa. In 2014, Caravan Ingredients and Purac, another food chain company, formed Corbion.

Last year, Corbion, which trades on the European Stock Exchange, tallied 770.1 million euros in sales, or about $1.023 billion, with 75 percent of revenue from food ingredients.

This story was originally published April 22, 2015 at 3:23 PM with the headline "Corbion, a low-key company responsible for food magic, is changing its ingredients."