Meet Nina Kuusisto – our multi-talented development assistant

Our heroes. That is what we call our col­leagues, who work with research and devel­op­ment of our sweet­ened fibres. It is their knowl­edge, expe­ri­ence and dili­gent work that makes Bayn the lead­ing sup­pli­er of sweet­ened fibre. And these peo­ple are the ones that help you choose the right sweet­ened fibre and fine-tune the com­po­si­tion of your appli­ca­tion, or cre­ate your own solu­tion for sug­ar reduc­tion. Although they are heroes, they are rarely seen and heard. We should rem­e­dy that. In a series of arti­cles, you get to meet our heroes.

In Gävle, 17 km north of Stockholm, there was pre­vi­ous­ly exten­sive con­fec­tionery and food pro­duc­tion. Today, many of the busi­ness­es are closed down.

But there is a well-attend­ed busi­ness in the mid­dle of the city - the Bayn inno­va­tion cen­tre. There, Nina Kuusisto, who has a sol­id back­ground in the food indus­try and con­fec­tionery, works after sev­en­teen years of work at Leaf /​ Cloetta in Gävle. When the busi­ness was closed down, she retrained her­self to cook, a dream she had achieved for a long time.

But since two years ago she has been devel­op­ing dif­fer­ent solu­tions for food. As part of Bayn’s research and devel­op­ment team, she is involved in devel­op­ing process­es and prod­ucts for sug­ar reduc­tion, as well as ensur­ing qual­i­ty and ensur­ing that the prod­ucts upon deliv­ery are approved and safe.

And she does one of the best things she knows - test­ing the solu­tions in prac­tice in our test kitchen.

Meet Nina Kuusisto - one of Bayn’s heroes.

Name

Nina Kuusisto

Born

1977

Work

Development assis­tant in the research and devel­op­ment team, work­ing with sup­ply chain with dai­ly order management

Leisure

Then I am with fam­i­ly and friends. I have a great inter­est in food, gar­den and build­ing main­te­nance. I live in an old house from 1910, with all that it means.

What kind of background do you have?

I have worked in both the food indus­try and the restau­rant world. For sev­en­teen years I worked at Leaf /​ Cloetta. First in pro­duc­tion, then in the qual­i­ty depart­ment and the last three years in the inno­va­tion department.

But when the Gävle fac­to­ry closed, I made a com­plete turn­around and retrained myself to cook. It was a big dream, and I had some excit­ing years at Högbo mill hotel. But in 2018, I was attract­ed back to prod­uct devel­op­ment in food.

That’s when you came in contact with Bayn?

Exactly. In fact, it was a for­mer col­league from Leaf /​ Cloetta who advised me on the posi­tion of devel­op­ment assis­tant at Bayn. At that point, she worked as an inno­va­tion man­ag­er here. We had pre­vi­ous­ly worked togeth­er on a major project with ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides when they were approved in the EU. It was a plea­sure to con­tin­ue work­ing with sug­ar reduc­tion again.

In what way do you think sugar reduction is interesting?

I have a great, per­son­al inter­est in what we eat. It is an over­all excit­ing area. Reducing sug­ar, or com­plete­ly remov­ing added sug­ar, is a glob­al con­cern, to say the least.

Every day I see the need for less sug­ar; they talk about it in media, but I also come across it with when meet­ing new peo­ple. There are inter­est and curios­i­ty among peo­ple about what is pos­si­ble, and what can be done.

The inno­va­tion cen­tre here in Gävle is at street lev­el. There are sur­pris­ing­ly many peo­ple from the pub­lic who knock on the door and have ques­tions. We usu­al­ly invite them and they get to taste the prod­ucts we have developed.

It is such a reward­ing feel­ing to be able to offer high-qual­i­ty solu­tions to our cus­tomers, which they can, in turn, offer the consumers.

What is the difference between what you do now and your past experience of sugar reduction?

In my pre­vi­ous work, I worked with sug­ar, ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides, but also arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers, such as aspar­tame, ace­sul­fame K. But at Bayn, we work with the over­all solu­tion Eureba, which replaces sug­ar one-on-one. With amaz­ing­ly good results, we can replace sug­ar with fibre and sweet­en­ers in, for exam­ple, pastries.

One of my tasks is to test these appli­ca­tions in the test kitchen. I have cooked both jam and mar­malade, and it is fun to see that it real­ly works to replace such a com­plex ingre­di­ent as sug­ar with Eureba. The result is incredible!

Can you describe your role in the team?

The peo­ple work­ing here have com­ple­men­tary skills and back­grounds, and togeth­er we devel­op solu­tions for our cus­tomers. I feel that my back­ground is right here. On the one hand, I have long expe­ri­ence from the food indus­try in gen­er­al, and on the oth­er hand, my spe­cif­ic expe­ri­ences on devel­op­ment work, leg­is­la­tion and raw mate­r­i­al con­trol are also utilized.

What does an ordinary working day look like?

I take care of the dai­ly oper­a­tions here in Gävle. I take part in var­i­ous projects, rang­ing from inter­nal to exter­nal projects, and assists in devel­op­ment work in prac­ti­cal terms. I check raw mate­ri­als and recipes, make our fin­ished solu­tions, han­dle and send sam­ples and take care of the administration.

What do you do in the test kitchen?

This is where all the fun hap­pens, for exam­ple, bak­ing, mak­ing ice cream and flavour­ing pro­tein prod­ucts. I am inves­ti­gat­ing whether it is pos­si­ble to pro­duce a prod­uct from a tech­ni­cal stand­point and how the raw mate­ri­als work. What is pos­si­ble? Is it go or no go?

I test new raw mate­ri­als, for exam­ple, dif­fer­ent types of fibre and sug­ar alco­hols. That bit is inter­est­ing and I learn some­thing all the time about how these liv­ing ingre­di­ents work and react.

Other prod­uct cat­e­gories we often work with are drinks, jams, sweets and pas­tries. We have many cus­tomers in these areas who want to replace or reduce sugar.

Finally, we exam­ine leg­is­la­tion and reg­u­la­tions, as well as assess­ing and cal­cu­lat­ing recipes.

How is the food assessed?

We do a sen­so­ry eval­u­a­tion, which in short means that we use our sens­es to the max­i­mum to eval­u­ate the prod­uct. We are pro­fes­sion­als regard­ing tast­ing with deep knowl­edge of sen­sorics. When we are ready, we send sam­ples to the cus­tomer for feedback.

We always look for­ward to hear­ing what our cus­tomers have to say. If there is improve­ment poten­tial we go back to test­ing and eval­u­at­ing, again and again until we reach a high-qual­i­ty result.

What happens next?

When the cus­tomer is sat­is­fied, we do a test run at the place where the prod­uct is to be man­u­fac­tured. Our main respon­si­bil­i­ty is to find the right appli­ca­tion for the cus­tomer, but we also want to ensure that the solu­tion works in all pos­si­ble aspects and that the end result is good.

Finally, what’s the most fun thing about your job?

Order man­age­ment may not sound so excit­ing, but in my case it real­ly is. It is a won­der­ful feel­ing to also be a part of the final stage as I get to fol­low up when our var­i­ous solu­tions actu­al­ly reach our cus­tomers. The entire chain from devel­op­ment work to sat­is­fied customers.