Citrus Innovation Center opens as first industry partnership at Florida Polytechnic in Lakeland
Gary White
- IFF, a Fortune 500 company specializing in flavors and fragrances, opened a 30,000-square-foot Citrus Innovation Center at Florida Polytechnic University.
- The center, located on the university campus, represents the first industry partner for Florida Poly and a starting point for its planned research park.
- IFF's facility will focus on research and development, training, and data analysis related to citrus flavors and fragrances.
LAKELAND — The first industry partner has arrived at Florida Polytechnic University, a Fortune 500 company whose newly opened center on campus bears more than a touch of Willy Wonka whimsy.
IFF, a New York-based company specializing in flavors and fragrances, unveiled its 30,000-square-foot Citrus Innovation Center with a media tour Wednesday morning. The intricately choreographed presentation previewed the company’s planned operations while offering a sensory swirl of customized samples — fizzy libations, citrus-tinged treats and curated fragrances.
The center occupies about two acres on the southwest side of the campus oval. IFF expects to have 30 employees by year’s end while moving toward nearly 50 in a later phase, said Karel Coosemans, vice president of Citrus Innovation.
Construction cost about $17 million, and IFF expects to spend about $8 million more on outfitting the building, Coosemans said. Ryan Companies US Inc. developed, designed, constructed and managed the building, which is owned by Harrison Street, an investment management firm, and leased to IFF.
Since Florida Poly opened in 2014 as the newest state university, its leaders have promoted the concept of a private research park on the undeveloped land surrounding the current campus. That vision has not yet materialized, so Florida Poly leaders decided that they had the space on campus to host an industry partner.
IFF’s executives had decided to create a facility in Central Florida, Coosemans said. When it became clear that working out a deal with the owners of the land ringing campus would take too long, they made a pitch to Florida Poly to become the first tenant on campus.
Coosemans acknowledged that a company that develops flavorings and scents might not have seemed a logical partner for a university focused on STEM subjects — science, technology, engineering and math.
“There was, I guess, a little bit of opposition because it's an engineering school,” he said. “They were looking at flavors, fragrance and so on. I think citrus really helps as a subject, because the university is sponsored by people that understand the citrus industry.”
Gateway open for Florida Poly
Allen Bottorff, Florida Poly’s vice president of administration and finance, joined part of the tour Wednesday, resplendent in a purple tie and glasses, reflecting the school’s dominant color. He said that the opening of the Citrus Innovation Center signals a seminal moment for the research park concept.
“It is absolutely the gateway — the beginning, the start of that,” Bottorff said. “It puts us on the map of saying, ‘Not only do we want it, but here, let's prove to you that we've done it. We've started this.’ We now have the seed of that in a big way, an international company sitting on our campus. A Fortune 500 company is now a partner with us in what we do. It becomes that beginning that we've known we've wanted to do.”
Florida Poly leaders want the school eventually to exert a local economic impact comparable to those of MIT and Cal Poly, Bottorff said. With the school still many years away from reaching its goal of 5,000 students, executives have determined that space on campus exists for a second industrial partner.
Florida Poly’s master plans include an adjacent site for a second industry partner, Bottorff said.
“The fact that we've activated this one now will certainly start to bring industry to have conversations with us about a second one,” he said.
IFF operates in the business-to-business realm, developing flavoring, scents and other products for corporate clients. The Citrus Innovation Center will pursue a range of purposes, Coosemans said: research and development, training, joint development work with customers and examining data.
The last area of focus means analyzing information to see if, for example, IFF can find better sources for raw materials. Coosemans said data analysis provides an obvious overlap with Florida Poly’s curriculum, and Bottorff concurred. He recalled an IFF fragrance specialist discussing a review of 20,000 data points.
“Who does that data analysis?” Bottorff said. “Where does that data science and the pieces that go around that work? This is exactly one of the pieces that we teach at Florida Poly, entire groups of computer scientists, data scientists, and those pieces that work and those analytics pieces.”
IFF also relies on chemistry and biology, two areas of study at Florida Poly, Bottorff said.
Florida Poly students already engage in “capstone” projects, Bottorff said, in which students assess a concept proposed by an industry partner.
“You can see IFF easily having spinoff of 10, 15, 20 of these types of projects a year for our students to work on,” he said. “But you can also see internships, where our students can come in and do the data science, can work alongside the experts in the field.”
Bottorff also foresees the inverse: IFF experts appearing in Florida Poly classrooms as guest speakers or lecturers.
Sensory overload during tour
While IFF’s corporate identity revolves around taste and smell, the company emphasizes visual elements in the Citrus Innovation Center. Murals from Lakeland artist Gillian Fazio cover many interior walls, starting with a swirl of oranges and blossoms just inside the entrance.
IFF describes the facility as the only citrus-focused facility in the world offering “a truly immersive experience.”
The first stop on Wednesday’s tour was The Grove, a botanical research area near the entrance. Crop Services Manager Gio Ijpkemeule pointed out the 39 citrus plants growing in individual black pots in the sunshine-saturated area — grapefruit, lemons, tangerines and limes.
IFF researchers seek to “find novel molecules” to pass on to flavorists and perfumers, Ijpkemeule said. LMR Pure Premium, a line of cold-pressed oils, uses technology that allows IFF to trace an oil’s origins beyond merely country or region to a specific plot of land, she said.
The company has embraced “upcycling,” transforming cast-off or inferior ingredients into high-quality products. IFF has contracts in Europe to collect discarded citrus peels from hotels and cafeterias and extract oils.
Inside The Grove, IFF had set up a stand where an employee sprayed a flavoring derived from upcycled oils onto vanilla ice cream, which she handed out as samples.
IFF has also explored using discarded hops from brewing operations as an ingredient source.
“We have a unique process to get the fruity and floral part of the hops without the bitterness, because hops can be really bitter,” Innovation Program Director Eve Martinet said. “That's exactly what we were looking for, to get this fruity character that goes very well with citrus. It can really boost a lot of citrus. It also can boost the tropical fruit and give it a different twist, make them more round, make them more rich.”
Martinet handed out small squares of dark chocolate containing what appeared to be chunks of orange but were actually inclusions made from juice and flavored with upcycled orange oil.
Other samplings would follow: more ice cream, this time infused with vanilla and citrus flavors derived from other botanical sources; batches of fruity beverages labeled “mystery flavor” and “enigma flavor”; and a taste test comparing two samples of orange juice, one of them supplemented with an IFF product.
Still bullish on citrus
The tour included a visit to The Observatory, a circular room designed for presentations to employees and customers and resembling a miniature IMAX theater. As guests sat among invitingly fluffy pillows on a round couch, facing outward, a projection of ever-shifting, psychedelic colors played along the walls, along with descriptions of IFF’s mission, while music created for the occasion played.
The experience culminated with Dana Gasiorowski, creative director and principal flavorist, using a gun to inject smoky toppings onto fruity, non-alcoholic drinks for the guests.
In one of the center’s two lab rooms, perfumers Yves Cassar and Dennis Maroney described the process of analyzing citrus sources down to the molecular level and experimenting to produce novel scents. IFF supplies fragrances for customers whose products range from colognes and perfumes to shampoo, candles and toilet bowl cleaners, Maroney said.
While the facility at Florida Poly is called Citrus Innovation Center, Coosemans emphasized that IFF’s innovations do not apply to the production of crops. The company will not be pursuing a solution to the scourge of citrus greening, a bacterial disease that has accelerated Florida’s — and Polk County’s — decline as a producer of fruit.
But IFF does have an established partnership with the University of Florida Citrus Research and Education Center, and it consults with growers on finding more resistant varieties, Coosemans said.
Florida’s citrus production has plummeted by 90% in the past two decades, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, and the trend is expected to continue. Given that atmosphere, it might seem odd for IFF to establish a Citrus Innovation Center in Central Florida.
Coosemans said that IFF, as a global company, does not rely on Florida for its supply of citrus ingredients. A map inside the center highlighted the sources of its raw material, including Turkey, Egypt and India.
“I don't see the citrus industry globally in decline, meaning the flavor, fragrance and so on,” Coosemans said. “The citrus business is in evolution. We need to understand where the future is going to be for the supply of the byproducts that our industry typically needs. We are very, very dependent on the juice industry. With the decay of the citrus industry in Florida, of course, everybody was starting to look at other places — Mexico, Brazil, South Africa.”
Coosemans, who regularly commutes from his home in Belgium, exulted in having the Citrus Innovation Center now operating, nearly three years after the groundbreaking.
“IFF is a company that has an entrepreneurial spirit, fully as a foundation of how we work,” he said. “Being able to run a project like this in a company like IFF, being able to get to this result, yeah, it's actually fantastic.”
Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on X @garywhite13.