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Taste of Success

Dan Wampler founded his natural flavor ingredients company, Sensus, in 1999. In 2000, he turned to Ohio State's Food Industries Center to evaluate if his proprietary extraction technology would produce similar high-quality flavor ingredients as the company's commercial plant in California.

"From start to finish, we were probably there for about two years," said Wampler, who earned his bachelor's and doctoral degrees at Ohio State in food technology. "We used the Food Industries Center to evaluate our technology on a few very important horticultural products."

Wampler tested new coffee- and tea-based product lines on the equipment, and got some processing assistance along the way. But the real advantage to using the Food Industries Center was speed, efficiency, and all the ancillary processing equipment necessary for the pre-processing of the coffee and tea raw materials, he said.

"We were able to get the equipment up and running very quickly, because all of the utilities and ancillary equipment are already there," he said. "That's a huge advantage -- having the mills, dryers, extruders, canning equipment, retorting equipment and especially the utilities available. It's an efficient way to drop in a piece of equipment and do the testing you need to do in a commercial environment."

Without the center available, Wampler said he would have had to hunt for a similar facility or rent some space and purchase additional equipment himself. "It would have been cost-prohibitive -- a real financial burden. And a lot more drawn-out process."

Using the Food Industries Center also linked him with researchers and scientists who could assist. "There's a significant amount of knowledge available there," he said.

Today, Sensus produces natural concentrated flavor essences (tomato, herb, coffee and tea) for the beverage, food and flavor industries and the food service industry. Its corporate headquarters in Hamilton, Ohio, is also home to a 32,000 square-foot manufacturing facility. A second Sensus plant in Los Banos, California, is operated in conjunction with the Morning Star Packing Company to produce Sensus' Natural Concentrated Tomato Essence. That location also works with SupHerb Farms in the San Joaquin Valley to produce its herb essences.

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Created: 2007-07-10, Updated: 2008-05-07