02 Aug 2010

Center of excellence will help enhance food quality and safety in India’s food sector

Gurgaon, India – Intertek, a leading provider of quality and safety solutions serving a wide range of industries around the world, announces the opening of a center of excellence food testing laboratory in Delhi’s NCR Gurgaon region to provide enhanced testing services to our customers in an area experiencing exponential growth due to the increasing global interest of raw materials and ready-to-eat products produced there.

With more than 300 food processors, the region is a hub of primary production and further processing for food raw materials, intermediate products and finished food products, making the centralized location of Gurgaon a prime choice for the new laboratory. Intertek’s Gurgaon laboratory brings an established independent food testing laboratory to a region that has seen an increased demand for testing as a result of growth in the food processing sector and potential for food exports.

“From the farm to the fork, the entire Indian food industry has evolved into a diverse network of multiple channels that Intertek’s new laboratory will support in producing and supplying better, more sustainable and safer food to citizens in the region and worldwide,” said Jochen Zoller, president of Intertek Food Services. “Intertek’s food services solutions help major global brands to launch new food products, enabling developing nations to increase their global food exports while reducing the incidence rates of food-borne diseases.”

Intertek offers a full range of services for the food industry, from lab testing to systems certification to corporate social responsibility audits. The Gurgaon laboratory will offer testing and analysis on a range of fresh fruits and vegetables, prepared and ready-to-eat foods, bakery and confections, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, drinking water, oils and fats, honey, dairy products, sugar and meat products. The state-of-the-art facilities are equipped to perform testing and analysis services for pesticides, antibiotics, heavy metals, aflatoxins, organic and GMO, nutritional labeling, organic compound residues, pathogens, allergens and shelf life studies, as well as other elements related to food production.