Organic ranges and sugar reduction remain key ingredients trends
Identifying market trends within ingredients throughout the year is of crucial importance to many businesses across the confectionery and bakery sectors. Renee Boerefijn, director innovation EMEA, Bunge Loders Croklaan, examines some of the major issues the company has picked up on.
As a company, we have visited several shows in the past few months and saw a number of themes that clearly dominate the industry.
The first and largest theme by far is sugar: in terms of reduction, “no added” claims, and replacements. It shows first and foremost in the chocolate itself, and it is perceived to be budding in filled products, where it is a much greater challenge due to the impact on composition (what can you use for back-fill?) and on texture (how do you make it taste as great or even better?). Especially the recovery or retention of texture in this reformulation context is an area of great interest for both Bunge Loders Croklaan and our customers, as we master mouthfeel and have a good grasp of the impact of our specialty fats on sweetness perception.
The second big trend we saw was naturalness, for example vegan or organic. In the integrated Bunge Loders Croklaan portfolio, we already have a small range of organic products, which gives us a starting point to talk to customers. In the fine bakery space, more specifically cakes, our recently launched Bunge Delica Pro® Gold delivers an E-free, lightly nut-flavored, airy and golden texture that embodies the naturalness trend very well.
Choco-bakery remains strongly visible as the way to upgrade bakery. As is the abundance of sandwich biscuits, whether as normal, full size, mini or thin to support a more balanced and responsible snacking habit. Sandwich biscuits typically have high-sugar cream-fillings with a relatively low fat content that will need attention to meet the sug-ar reduction requirements. Also the mouthfeel of these products can often be quite grainy and may therefore benefit from a more advanced cream filling fat, like the ones that Bunge Loders Croklaan has on offer. Bunge Loders Croklaan has a wide range of filling fats in the portfolio, where the products from the Biscuitine range are especially suitable to be used in the cream filling for a sandwich cookie application.
