Services
Leatherhead provides specialised quality & safety, regulatory, nutrition, product development and sensory & consumer insight to the food and beverage sector. We work with all stakeholders in the sector including retailers, food service, food & beverage manufacturers, brand owners, ingredients companies and regulatory bodies. We operate across all stages of the product innovation lifecycle. The benefit of Leatherhead is that it is truly cross-disciplinary meaning that it brings multiple perspectives to bear on our clients’ problems.
Our capabilities
Leatherhead has extensive food science and food process capabilities.
Regulation
Ensuring that when food & beverage products come to market, they meet with all necessary local and international regulation and that they have been properly authenticated and tested to the highest standards is critical. Leatherhead’s global regulatory team can help you with all aspects of food & beverage regulation, whether that’s from routine testing, a regulatory question or contributing to an internationalisation strategy.

Global regulatory advice
Our global regulatory teams provide you a with an unparalleled global food regulatory advisory service covering more than 100 countries.
Product compliance
Our multilingual team of regulatory advisers helps assess the legal compliance of all aspects of your food or beverage product globally.
Incident support
Incidents in the food and beverage industry can be emotive and can quickly gain momentum, we can support you through the process.
Expert witness
When commercial or legal disputes occur in the food & beverage industry, we have specialist staff who can be called upon to give expert witness.
Label assessment
Ensuring that the labelling on a product is compliant with its chosen market is critical and we can advise you quickly on whether your labelling conforms.
Pet food regulatory advice
Our experts give advice and support for formulation, validation, substantiation and authorisation of your pet food product.
Food safety
Leatherhead provides key services for those involved in creating, managing and improving the food safety processes and procedures in operation in their organisations. This includes assessing existing processes and products through challenge testing and advising on safety for new products with services such as shelf-life establishment.

Process safety – HACCP, BRC
Compliance to BRC and HACCP practice is a requirement of many major retailers and manufacturers and we can help you achieve this.
Challenge testing
Challenge testing is a key way of determining if products and processes are truly safe – we can carry out challenge testing for you.
Shelf life assessments
We specialise in designing and tailoring shelf life trials to maximise the quality and life of your products.
Troubleshooting
Issues can arise in food & beverage production and being able to quickly identify what is causing the problem is key to being able to resolve it quickly.
Product innovation
Developing and bringing new products to market safely and complying with the necessary regulation yet within accelerated deadlines is critical. Leatherhead’s experienced team of food scientists, microscopists and researchers help food and drink companies with every step of the innovation cycle. Our experts can offer assistance from idea generation and prototype development, through to scale-up and pre-launch product optimisation, to post-launch product monitoring and maintenance.

New product development
With a deep expertise in all aspects of food science and nutrition, our innovation teams can help you realise ideas and strategies for new product development.
Existing product development
We can help you reformulate existing foods & beverage products in line with market, consumer, regulatory, business -strategy and cost reasons.
Ingredients intelligence
We can help you stay abreast of the “next big thing” in ingredients – whether that’s the latest superfood or the latest sugar replacement.
Sugar reduction
We can help you reformulate a product with a view to reducing its sugar content and have a fully defined process to help you fast-track this.
Nutrition intelligence
Our team of nutritionists are continually scanning the nutrition landscape and can keep you abreast of the latest research, regulation and guidance which could impact your product strategy.
Nutrition testing
We can assist you in testing how your food & beverage products into broader nutritional programmes or strategies with services such as GI/GR and satiety testing services.
Cooking instructions
Our cooking instructions teams create and verify the cooking instructions found on food labels.
Product blueprinting
We can help you with product reformulation using our unique blueprinting service
Consumer & sensory insight
Consumers are the life-blood of the food and drinks industry and must be at the heart of innovation and new product development (NPD). Our Consumer & Sensory Insight services are designed for Marketing, R&D, Brand and Consumer Insight teams. We’ll help you to ensure that your brand remains relevant in the face of rapidly changing consumer demands and the rise of challenger brands.

Brand protect: consumer-led product evolution
Enabling marketing and R&D professionals to grow volume or value share of existing product propositions by giving clear recommendations from sensory product characterisation, qualitative consumer insight and quantitative consumer product testing.
Brand stretch: consumer-led concept & new product development
Enabling NPD, brand and marketing professionals to identify and qualify opportunity areas, as well as new product and packaging propositions most likely to deliver success in new categories, markets or brand re-positioning efforts.
Margin optimisation: consumer-led quality & cost management
Enabling quality, R&D and brand managers to optimise margins without compromising consumer experience by providing robust consumer and sensory insight focussed on consumer priorities.
Disrupt: consumer-led innovation
Qualitative and quantitative consumer insight, enabling innovators to understand the consumer view of a new technology, ingredient or early-stage product concept to inform implementation strategies.
Training
We run regular training courses and events at our prestigious Great Burgh premises. These events provide a great opportunity to keep in touch with the industry.
Membership
Membership of Leatherhead gives access to the member helpline for advice on regulations, product development, nutrition, safety and consumer research.