In this series, British Baker talks to people from across the baking industry to find out about their career path, what their job involves, and the latest trends that are shaping their work.
We’re looking to showcase a diverse range of talent and job types across the industry, so if you’d like to be involved, please email amy.north@wrbm.com
Name: Gilbert van der Wal
Age: 52
Job title: Senior bakery enzyme application scientist (EMEA region)
Company: IFF (International Flavour and Fragrances)
Education: Nine years full time bakery education in The Netherlands, followed with a BSc in Agroproduct Management with a specialisation in NPD
Tell us about your career to date
My passion for the bakery industry began when I was 14 years old helping on weekends and holidays at the local village bakery, back in my hometown of Eastermar (a small village in the north of The Netherlands). Later, in the last year of my degree, I did six months’ work experience with George Weston Foods, in Sydney Australia supporting with the commissioning of a new test bakery, ongoing R&D projects and developing new recipes utilising ingredients from the sales brochure used by the mill sales team. My final thesis was at Enkhuizer banket, (now part of the Lotus group), where I developed a low energy sports biscuit.
My first full time job arrived just after my graduation as bakery technologist at Weston Research Laboratory (WRL), in Maidenhead (now ATC). I did a variety of different projects, testing lab scale new equipment, new ingredients, working on projects in the bakeries and organizing harvest change over trials in the test bakery for the milling, baking and ingredient divisions of ABF.
While science is important, my hands-on experience is what truly drives my expertise
After WRL, I moved over to the technical team at Allied Bakeries HQ, as a bakery process technologist supporting the bakeries across the UK and Ireland. My main activities where basically divided over the following areas: trouble shooting, process optimisation, training, pre-launch factory trials and new equipment testing. The biggest project I worked on during my time at Allied Bakeries was to change all bakeries over from powdered improvers and softening systems to a five liquid ingredient system.
After approximately six years at WRL and Allied Bakeries I moved to AB Mauri as a technical support manager. I learned a lot about functional ingredients and how to formulate functional bakery ingredient systems. After nearly 10 years, I became the subject matter expert for bakery at Greencore Northampton. After spending six years at Greencore an opportunity came up to join IFF, and in December 2021 I joined IFF as a bakery enzyme application scientist responsible for the EMEA region.
Explain your job in a sentence (or two)
Supporting the sales team and customers in Europe and Africa with application support mainly related to enzymes, but also other functional bakery ingredients IFF are selling (emulsifiers, hydrocolloids, sweeteners, etc).
What does a typical work day involve for you?
My work day is always different. I’m constantly on the move, traveling internationally and collaborating with my colleagues across a wide area.
On average I spend half my time traveling to customers in Europe (including UK) and Africa, and the other half of my time is working from home. Every six weeks I will spend approximately one week at our R&D facility in Brabrand where we have a fully equipped test bakery and analytical lab, and one to two weeks traveling to customers, supporting the sales team with customer meetings and presentations, organising training sessions, working with customers in their test bakery on projects, supporting with customer trials in bakeries, organising customer visits to our R&D campus/site in Brabrand.
When working from home, my time is mainly divided between meetings, preparing for customer visits, writing reports, and supporting customers remotely and preparing test bakery trials.
What are the common misconceptions about your role?
Although I have a food science related degree, my true passion and experience lies in everything related to baking. I have a bakery education and have worked my way up from sweeping the floor and cleaning baking trays, gaining valuable experience and knowledge along the way. For me, the most important aspect is having a practical understanding of the interaction between ingredients, processes, and the environment. While science is important, my hands-on experience is what truly drives my expertise.
Tell us about a challenge you have overcome recently.
During a recent customer visit to Egypt, on arrival I had to completely change the programme we had agreed on, as they had a big issue with the latest shipment of Russian wheat. The characteristics had changed so much that they couldn’t get it to work in the bakeries as it was creating very short doughs that had no extensibility. Doing field trails over the next three days we managed to get the problem resolved allowing our customer to keep supplying their customers, with the quality and consistency they expected.
What are your career highlights so far?
There are a few, but winning the school bread baking championships and representing the school at the national championships will be up there as well as working in countries around the world and learning about their baking industry and products. But for me the most important one is building good, trustworthy working relationships with my colleagues and customers I’m responsible for.
What advice would you give to up-and-coming talent in the baking industry.
If you really want something, go for it. In my experience you create your own luck. Have an idea of where you would like to be when you retire, then break this down in smaller chunks of say five-year plans. This will keep you focused on what you are looking for to achieve in your career and will keep you motivated. But always try to keep a good work/life balance. You work to live and not live to work.
Interested in a career in bakery? Check out Foodmanjobs for the latest vacancies.
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