A host of worthy winners claim honours at our World Confectionery Awards
Waleed Nasir, collects the Sustainability initiative of the year award at the World Confectionery Conference. Pic: Philip Taylor/Confectionery Production
Industry excellence across the board was celebrated with this year’s World Confectionery Awards, presented at the third edition of the World Confectionery Conference in Harrogate, Yorkshire, UK.
The event framed itself around core themes of sustainability, business resilience and innovation, and drew a broad sector audience, and addressed key global market issues in terms of supply chains, manufacturing and development of finished products (see our exclusive video review of the event here).
Honours for this year’s show were presented within five key categories, including best sustainability initiative, which went to Cargill, for its targeted cocoa community farming empowerment scheme in West Africa, working with women to help gain access to financial training and enabling access to loans schemes to enable income diversification.
The honours were collected by Waleed Nasir (main image and below, left, with Confectionery Production editor Neill Barston), a sustainability business lead for the business, who had also presented at this year’s conference, stressed that the award was “very for the whole team.”
A highly commended accolade went to the UK’s Fudge Kitchen, which had nominated its sustainability practices in making notable strides within its product packaging, and overall manufacturing operations.
Notably, Switzerland’s Lindt (pictured below) emerged as the winner within the best finished product category for crafting its premium Choco Wafers, which impressed judges in their respective milk and dark chocolate formats. As previously reported by Confectionery Production, the business has enjoyed particularly strong trading performance in the past year, which has led to additional resources being placed into extending its overall chocolate portfolio.
There was also a highly commended award for East Sussex-based Jeavons Toffee (below), regarding its latest vegan lines that have shown continued improvement in flavour and textures.
For the machinery sector, the winning business was Syntegon, with judges praising the development of its Nutraflash turnkey solution created for starchless production of gummy and jelly lines, which has particularly targeted the fast-rising nutraceutical market. There was also a highly commended accolade for Schubert, in devising its latest case packing innovation.
The Team of the Year category award was also open to the entire industry, with some especially strong entries, with the winner being named as Italy’s Cama Packaging (UK MD Mark Brooker pictured below), for its project management in providing a bespoke equipment solution for US-based Hawaiian Host, which had specific requirements for the installation of a complete system within a compact manufacturing area.
There was also a highly commended accolade in the category, for Lancashire equipment group, BCH, (collected by Stuart Grogan) which recognised the progress made in the past few years since the business was saved from a period of financial instability. It has shown considerable resilience under new ownership, with its order book of equipment now being particularly strong around the world.
As for ingredients, top honours went to Germany’s Capol (Mary Hare, regional sales manager, below), for some especially strong innovation in delivering its Vivapigments coatings, with its latest extension focused on the creation of a natural whitening agent, acting as a clean label alternative to titanium dioxide. Furthermore, GNT received a highly commended recognition for its recent extension of its long-established Exberry colouring foods application, which has strong use within the confectionery industry.
Editor Neill Barston commented: “Thank you indeed for everyone who placed an entry into this year’s World Confectionery Awards held at our World Confectionery Conference in Harrogate, which formed a fitting conclusion to this year’s show in Yorkshire. There were some genuinely extremely impressive entries across all our categories, which were judged by an internal panel, supported by our editorial board.
“So, the level of innovation that has been seen across equipment, systems, ingredients and finished products really underlined the fact that despite us inhabiting some notably challenging times with regards to tests with supply chains, inflation and ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which have all posed additional issues for manufacturers across our combined industries. But there’s been plenty of resilience shown across our markets which has been especially encouraging.”
