5 December 2025 | Martin Whitworth, Principal Scientist – Campden BRI
The needs of the food and drink industry are constantly evolving, driven by new technologies, consumer demand and competitive, regulatory and sustainability pressures. Our research programme is designed to address emerging challenges and opportunities.
We invest in research to support our members and clients, develop our capabilities and services, and remain competitive.
Our research themes – food safety, diet and health, digitalisation, sustainability, and affordability – are focused on delivering commercial benefits to our members.
Here we cover some of the latest research projects, including some exciting services available as a result.
Innovate UK and BBSRC projects
UKRI funding channels, such as Innovate UK and BBSRC, are some of our research funding mechanisms, alongside private contract projects and our own Research Investment Programme.
Some of the Innovate UK projects in which we are involved include:
- Modern Baker Alternative-Nutrition Food Technology Blend: Enhancing the nutritional value of multiple commonly eaten products.
- Development of Hollow-fibre Bioreactor Technology to enable resource-efficient cultivated meat production – see abstract and our MIG presentation Development of Cultivated Meat Capabilities.
- We are trialling this technology in our pilot plant.
- Production of Spirulina Protein through PEF-Enhanced Recovery – see abstract
- UV Treatment Of Powders – see abstract
We also collaborate with universities and other institutions on other UKRI projects. An example is this BBSRC-funded project:
- Unlocking the potential of wheat grain heterogeneity using machine vision.
- We have pioneered the use of hyperspectral imaging technology to map food composition (see R&D 324 and compositional mapping of food).
- We supervised a PhD project that applied the method for grain and seed classification (Industry-academia partnership delivers high impact PhD).
- The current project (see abstract ) applies that technology to study wheat heterogeneity and the genetic causes. An example of other work from the project was provided in a MIG presentation by Kate Dugina.
The Campden BRI Research Investment programme
Here we provide an overview of some of our own projects, including links to further information and how we can help in these areas.
Smart process optimisation software
In this project, we developed software to predict the effect of changes in thermal processing conditions – to allow users to optimise a thermal process quickly and efficiently, via the three-way predictive analysis of energy costs, microbiological safety (process lethality) and quality optimisation.
Our ThermaGen™ software was launched in May 2025 and is available as a web-based tool on a subscription basis.
