My first visit to the headquarters of FOSS located near Copenhagen was made all the more exciting by the addition of the first snowfall of the season.
Founded in 1956 by Nils Foss, FOSS is the leading global provider of analytics for the food and agricultural industries, helping producers maximise the value of their production. Dairy, Raw Milk Testing, Feed and Forage, Grain, Beer and Wine are sectors incorporated within FOSS’s wide industry coverage.
With 1500 employees around the world, FOSS has initiated more than 100 patents and 20 world-first products via the reinvestment of 10% of turnover in research and innovation. 85% of the world’s milk production and 80% of grain traded on the world market is tested with a FOSS analytical solution.
I met with Marian Reed, Industry Manager – Beer; Christina Lindstorff, Global Head of Segment – Wine & Beer; Søren Heide, Programme Director for Wine and Beer; Sara Kozma, Business Developer and Anna Damgaard Nissen, Content Writer.
Søren gave me a tour of FOSS headquarters (comprising two buildings, one housing the sales & marketing team, services, chemical laboratory and biolaboratory, with the second housing R & D), showcasing the current FOSS analytical instruments.
A tour of the FOSS museum showcased the development timeline of the many innovations and analytical instruments, stretching back to the initial CeraTester (a moisture meter for grain), developed in 1954.
The 1960s saw FOSS move to sample preparation and, in the 1970s, sample preparation was built into their instruments. Supporting the development of the MilkoScan and MilkoScreen machines, enabling compositional analysis of liquid and semi-solid dairy products such as milk, cream, whey, yoghurt, creme fraiche.
The 1980s saw a move to digital and, in 1989, FOSS developed bacterial analysis in milk via the BactoScan.
The WineScan, developed in 1999 saw FOSS move into rapid routine analysis of sulphites and other wine parameters .
The range of ProFoss machines enables real-time, accurate production monitoring for animal feed, grain and semi liquid dairy products such as butter via x-ray analysis to detect moisture and fats.
Most companies would not showcase their failures but FOSS’s Chamber of Horrors showcases how failure of an idea/technical solution leads to ultimate success.
My tour finished with a demonstration of the BeerFoss machine, literally a lab in a box, which takes only three minutes to gain a result (direct alcohol measurement, density, pH and extracts for three sample types; wort, fermentation and beer) and self cleans in 10 minutes (I took a video of the self cleaning, which can be seen on the BFBi Instagram account.
Before returning to the airport, we popped by Gamma Brewery where Head Brewer and Co Owner, Peter Reid gave us a quick tour and sample of his “Never Meet Your Heros” beer, fresh from the latest brewing batch and analysed by BeerFoss.
For more information about FOSS please contact:
Marian Reed – maer@foss.dk or
Christina Lindstorff – chlf@foss.dk
