A joint bid by flavour and fragrance ingredients specialist Treatt and Northumbria University has secured the Suffolk company £50,000 of funding from the Government’s innovation agency, Innovate UK.

The Bury St Edmunds-based firm and the university, whose work on the project is funded by BBSRC, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, will now be able to progress a knowledge transfer partnership after making a successful pitch as part of Innovate UK’s “IB Catalyst” competition.

Northumbria University, based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, is an emerging centre of excellence in flavour biocatalysis and Treatt will now be able to use ideas and technology developed there to create new, cost-effective ingredients solutions.

Charlotte Catignani, research and development manager at Treatt, said: “I am delighted we have been awarded the Innovate UK funding and extremely grateful to our partners at Northumbria, Dr Georgios Koutsidis and Dr Gary Black, for their invaluable help composing a successful application.

“This funding is a vote of confidence in Treatt’s innovation activities and collaborative work with academia and also demonstrates our continued investment in R&D as we have matched the Innovate UK funding on the project. We are excited to begin the project and see what we can achieve.”

Dr John Boddington, Treatt’s director of technical services, added: “There is a lot of competition for these Innovate UK grants so this is a massive achievement by the technical team here at Treatt. We fully expect this to lead to the development of new, cutting edge flavour ingredients to add to our portfolio of products.”