New Food Product Development

Holger York Toschka, Ph.D., was until recently Senior Director Research and Development Foods at Unilever PLC, a British multinational fast-moving consumer goods company. Holger’s responsibilities in the past years included driving general food science and technology, innovation- and product maintenance, in local, regional and global food product portfolios He has 30-plus years of food industry management and leadership experience in the areas of packed, branded Food Development, Food science and technology, biosciences, human nutrition, project and program management, including manufacturing & sourcing, margin improvement, simplification, regulation and sustainability. During his time with the company Holger was heading product development in more 20 countries on local, regional- and global scale, leading to taking responsible for hundreds of new product innovations, renovations, and refreshments. He can look back to an end-to-end experience in the packed food sector, ranging from science detection, product- and concept development, shaping of product manufacturing and safety up to activation and market maintenance. Beside many years in leading roles in the global R&D centers, Holger spent more than 7 years in Southeast Asia, in functions where he was leading Foods R&D for all markets in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, sitting on various local and regional innovation boards and managing multinational teams of up to 100+ managers, experts and technologists Alongside his work in overall Food research and development Holger spent a couple of years in Ice cream and Refreshment research and development and food manufacturing and sourcing. In his time with Unilever, he had the opportunity to provide many presentations and lead talks on international conferences in Europe and Asia, as well as lectures at local universities about Food science and technology, nutrition, health food and sustainability. Holger earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular sciences with emphasis on gene expression and regulation at the Free University of Berlin and the Max-Planck Institute for molecular genetics. He published several scientific articles in the field of food science and molecular biology, holds several patents in biosciences and recently help to edit a book about the “science of the Thai cuisine”. Holger is married since many years to Ute, with 4 grown up children and right now lives again in Southern Germany. Today he works as a global food and innovation consultant.