Dave Savage- Pepisco R&D, Cork

Susan Aherne spent her Internship with Pepsico R&D in Cork working in the  Concentrate Development Team.

As part of her Internship, Susan worked very closely with one of our team members in Concentrate Development, and found herself as the lead Analyst in the department where she demonstrated experience beyond her years in how she led and managed the day to day analysis for a key Sugar Reduction project. This work involved full quality testing, sensory profiling and documenting all results which she presented to R&D leadership team and Product Development colleagues in Valhalla New York on a weekly basis.

This gave Susan huge exposure to the wider R&D community here in Cork while enhanced her communication skills.  As well as this Susan also completed a Gatorade Harmonization Programme for six different formula, examining the common links between the various formulae and again documented same and presented to R&D Pepsico Global Sensory Team based in Little Island.  

She played a key role in the Intern Project “PepsEco” which was the designated project all the Interns completed as a group and presented to all Pepsico employees during August this included Global Manufacturing Leaders, showing great presentation skills.

Susan is a credit to UCC School of Food and Nutritional Sciences! 

Dave Savage

R&D Concentrate Development, Pepisco R&D, Cork

Jennifer Ramsbottom - 4th Year Nutritional Science student

My placement was in Velo Coffee Roasters from which I gained fantastic experience. As part of the internship I worked on a project - Grow with Aldi - which was an initiative to give small Irish food producers an opportunity to become listed with Aldi should they be successful after a trial period in store.

We progressed through various rounds and were eventually chosen as one of five producers to be taken on permanently as core products at Aldi nationally. I was involved in bringing the product 'Velo Tandem' from idea to shelf. This was of course a huge success for a small local producer - suffice to say my workplace mentor Rob was thrilled! 

The coffee has been on the shelves in 137 Aldi stores nationwide since January. I am still involved with the business and helped get the opening order ready in January over the Christmas break.

Below I've included some of the media coverage received if it is of interest. 

https://www.eveningecho.ie/businessnews/Cycling-businessman-Rob---woke-up-and-smelled-the-coffee-36860176-5643-48fd-abe2-03b2c6befcaf-ds 

https://www.independent.ie/business/irish-caf-popular-with-coffee-lovers-brews-up-successful-partnership-with-aldi-37203749.html

artnership-with-aldi-37203749.html

Kate Collins - 4th Year Nutritional Science student

My name is Kate Collins and I am currently in my final year of BSc Nutritional Sciences in UCC. During my 3^rd year 6-month work placement at Drover Foods Ltd., I was given a project to undertake. This was to create a vegan sausage that could replace a normal sausage in sandwiches, rolls, ready meals etc. From the knowledge I had acquired while studying at UCC, I was able to put theory into practice by developing a “meat-like” sausage from plant based ingredients. Learning how different food macronutrients, specific ingredients and other minerals interact with each other, especially upon heating and pressure really helped with creating this product. Also, having done modules in microbiology helped with determining shelf life stability. All in all, I had to pull information I had learned in many of the modules I had undertaken here at UCC to create this product, which is now a part of Boots UK vegan sandwich line.