By Peter Naylor, Inroads International Ltd
As feed flavour and aroma specialists Inroads International celebrate 30 years of trading, founder Peter Naylor looks back at the industry and what the future of feed flavours might hold.
Back in 1989, saying goodbye to a senior, well paid position within
a big corporate was the biggest risk I think you could take. But that’s exactly what I did. Armed with a vision, an extensive book of contacts and the self–belief that I could become successful, Inroads International was born.
Tastetite opened up huge opportunities for us. We had begun to
invest in our own facilities and had aspirations to have complete control and full traceability of our operations. We were now exporting and became a major supplier into the US pig feed market as well as sending product to Asia and Europe. We reinvested in people and equipment, always keeping one eye on future-proofing the business. As the business progressed, we could see many benefits to be
gained from aligning ourselves with the food industry, which we set out to do with the appointment of our first chemist fifteen years ago. This flavour scientist brought us a totally new perspective, with innovation and solutions abound. His expertise pushed us further, adapting and using the huge research output from the human food industry – research that sadly agriculture will never generate sufficient funds to initiate, but work we can definitely take advantage of. We were opened up to the benefits of new flavour profiles and we
used this expertise to help offset the pressure our customers faced in raw material changes to create solutions to suit all applications, from feed to pet food and bedding.
Peter & Pauline Naylor, founders of Inroads International Ltd My wife, Pauline, joined me and together we were sourcing and
trading feed additives and farm supplies which soon escalated the business, and by the mid–1990s the time was right to really fulfil my ambition – to return to a focus on feed flavours. With flavours in my corporate background and a personal interest in
flavour technology, I knew I could create something different that was technically advanced and also provided a platform to add value to our customers’ feeds. Our new approach would concentrate on changing feed palatability through taste.
We developed and invested in a food technology that is still known today as ‘Tastetite’, and it gave us an advantage that was probably way ahead of its time and grossly underestimated. Tastetite is a unique flavour protection and delivery technology that
allows us to fundamentally change the way taste (flavour) is received by target animals. The historic use of highly aromatic compounds only goes so far in improving their acceptance; to change and improve feed palatability, we need to improve the way feed and supplements taste. By modifying the taste, we are able to mask the presence of unpalatable raw materials and deliver assured intake which is the underlying pre-requisite of good nutrition.
PAGE 36 JULY/AUGUST 2019 FEED COMPOUNDER
Today, our food scientists all play a vital role in the business, feeding us with data from the food industry, which has helped us to create a significant and varied portfolio. It was Prof. David Bains’ appointment and expertise within our technical team that finally encouraged us to explore flavour technologies and their influence on young animal nutrition. David could see potential in how a concept called ‘imprinting’ – the induction of perinatal sensory/nutritional imprinting via the maternal diet – could help the feed industry. So we approached INRA (the French National Institute for
Agricultural Research) to investigate how much additional value this provided, particularly to the pig industry, with three key aims:
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