Exclusive: Candy Kittens launches plant-based series at ISM Cologne

Screen presenter and entrepreneur Jamie Laing, co-founder of British confectionery business Candy Kittens has spoken of his company’s latest launch at ISM, reports Neill Barston.

Meeting with Confectionery Production, the TV personality and investor spoke of his experiences driving forward his business over the past decade, as it presented its Shox plant-based gourmet sours, which have been developed with a palm-oil free recipe.

As Jamie (right of pic), who is appearing at this year’s show in Cologne at Koelnmesse alongside business partner Ed Sweet-Williams (left of image), explained there had been a strong response to its latest series and its wider portfolio at the event.

“I think this is a special show here at ISM as it’s the one place in the world where buyers and sellers, and consumer together, anyone who is in the industry. It’s quite hard to find people who work in anywhere from the US, Holland, or Germany, Italy, France, or UK, all come together for the love of the same thing – snacks and confectionery, so it’s a great place to come.

“I’ve been wanting to do our latest ‘super sour’ range for ages, we have several others, but we’ve finally launched Shox, and they’re possibly my favourites yet,” explaining there has been a genuinely positive response to the series in Cologne.

As the business noted, sours as a format has continued to perform strongly as a segment, with the broader category seeing a total of16% growth in the past year.

The company is just one of more than 30 UK enterprises exhibiting at this year’s ISM, which is significantly up on the handful of British firms that made it over to Germany last year amid pandemic-hit conditions that significantly impacted on the show’s potential.

As for Jamie’s own story, while his great-great grandfather Alexander founded the McVitie’s biscuit business, he reflected that while he may have those historic family connections to the industry, he had been extremely conscious any business enterprise had to be something that he had developed entirely off his own initiative and that of his fellow team members.

“My business partner Ed and I have built our company over the past 11 years – and confectionery is a tricky area, hence why most of the giants are 100 years old as it’s a tough market. But we thought from the very beginning that we wanted to create something different, and realised that sweets were aimed at younger people – and wanted to look at things differently, which is what you want to do with any business.

“If you follow the crowd it’s a bit boring, so we have always thought differently, so we wanted to create sweets that have ‘no nasties’ in them, and so we’re vegan, gluten-free, natural flavourings and natural fruit juice, always striving for bigger and better,” explains Jamie, who is continuing the Made In Chelsea reality TV series that brought him to the public eye, adds his team is especially proud of having become a B Corp business, operating to high sustainability standards across its operations.

“Not only do we want to create some great sweets, we also want to leave the planet in a better place,” he notes of the company’s approach to manufacturing, which it has said was born of a certain level of blind naivety behind its original vision for the company, that has become a gradual success through the combined efforts of its team.

As he reflects, one of the drivers of its continued expansion has been achieved through a manufacturing partnership with German-based confectionery firm Katjes, which products the Candy Kittens ranges from the designs developed from Jamie and his colleagues.

“There’s a lot of hard work involved, so you have to be persistent and I actually think a lot of companies fail as they’re not persistent enough. We’ve had some tough times as well, but we have knocked on doors and had some great times as well, and that’s all part of the process. It’s our eighth year here at ISM and we couldn’t be prouder of the business,” enthuses Jamie, who says that life is proving especially memorable for him on all fronts.

Having just got married to his wife Sophie, they’re looking forward to a break away together, before the hard work starts up again in moving the company forward to the next level with its ever-extending range of planet-friendly sweets.

As the entrepreneur noted, that work is very much a case of teamwork, with his business partner Ed explaining the development of the company over the past decade. One of the most significant factors in his view is in having a clear vision for the company, which has gained market traction through seeking a key point of difference as presenting a more environmentally responsible company.

He said: “You start off with the business with an idea, and it’s initially about proving that concept, and convince yourself more than anything else that it can work, and then you’re able to convince others, and people start buying your products.

“We have a phrase at Candy Kittens that ‘better is possible’ and we are constantly looking to make improvements, we’ve made them smaller and continued to tweak them. In the past 18 months we have made a really big step forward. We’ve really established ourselves in the UK, and the grocery market there is where we see the future, and we’re focusing on making a success of that,” concluded Ed, who noted that ISM remains a key date in its annual calendar, with the 2023 edition having proved a success.