Arjan van Asselt

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Safe & Stable

Well preserved, healthy and good tasting food at low cost! A challenge? By choosing NIZO’s expert knowledge on all shelf-life issues your product will gain on all aspects. Ingredient or final product, clean label or food safety, we can help!

My background is in food microbiology and that is where my interest in food safety and stability started. At present I am an expert in the field of processing related to product quality in a much broader sense. As well as food safety and stability, this also includes taste, stability and safety.

Clients come to me with complex quality issues concerning products with e.g. phase separation during shelf-life or problems with heat resistant spore forming bacteria.

I enjoy working together in a multi-disciplinary project team with clients and NIZO experts to find the cause of a problem. I like to puzzle and solve complex issues. We define clear actions for current and future operations.

In quality management there is a shift from measuring towards prevention by calculating risks and statistical analysis. In my opinion the only way for this to work is to translate these risk numbers into concrete actions for operations.

My work and career (see also LinkedIn: nl.linkedin.com/in/arjanvanasselt)

I studied food technology in Bolsward, NL (BSc., 1991) and food microbiology at Wageningen University (MSc., 1995). In 1996 I started my career in fruit juice processing and worked as shift manager, maintenance engineer and at finally as process technologist. In 2000 I joined NIZO food research as a project manager in the field of processing and food microbiology. Within these projects I gained a broad expertise in the fields of:

• Optimising heat treatment processes a.o. with regard to inactivation of microbial spores
• Designing and optimising (CIP-)processes
• Microbial contaminations

Currently I’m acting as group leader in the field of sustainable processing and responsible for activities in the field of process design and efficiency at NIZO food research. In addition, as a product manager I’m responsible for the product “Safe & Stable”.