This past November, an arbitration tribunal ordered New Zealand dairy company Fonterra to pay Danone of France $125 million in recall-related costs. The arbitration came after Fonterra issued a precautionary recall in August 2013 for some customers, including Danone, who had been supplied with its WPC80 ingredient and products containing WPC80. It was later confirmed that there was no food safety risk to the public, Fonterra noted.

Chr. Hansen, a global bioscience company that develops natural ingredient solutions, said it entered into a partnership with Rheolution Inc., Montreal, on the global distribution of Rheolution’s CoaguSens and ElastoSens products. Aimed at cheesemakers, the products offer real-time analytics of the milk coagulation process, measuring the flocculation point, the milk gel firmness and the speed of coagulation. Using the products, cheesemakers can determine the optimal time to cut the cheese curd at a controlled firmness.

Tate & Lyle said the expansion and process upgrades at its Sta-Lite Polydextrose facility in Nantong, Jiangsu Province, China, are now complete. The expansion increased capacity at the acquired facility three-fold. Manufacturing and quality processes at the facility were also significantly enhanced. In addition, the London-based company improved the facility’s packaging capabilities and implemented advanced environmental management infrastructure and systems.

In other news, Tate & Lyle said it achieved Non-GMO Project verification for 18 starch ingredients, including the entire line of Claria functional clean-label starches.

Mettler Toledo, a global manufacturer of precision instruments, developed two free food guides to help increase good-manufacturing productivity and compliance. The “Food Productivity Guide” covers 16 areas where concepts such as high-speed checkweighing, foreign-body detection or advanced batch control can help ensure quality while simultaneously reducing processing time. The “Food Compliance Guide,” meanwhile, offers guidance for quality managers, showing how weighing and foreign-body solutions can help companies stay in compliance with — or become compliant with — global food safety standards such as BRC, IFS and SQF, the company said.