Cargill celebrates Fi Europe chocolate alternative award honours

After a major showing at this year’s Fi Europe event, Cargill is in celebratory mood after claiming honours at the influential international ingredients show, marking success with developing a significant chocolate alternative, writes Neill Barston.

The business, which recently played a key role in our World Confectionery Conference event in Brussels, emerged triumphant at the event operating across the food and beverage sector across categories, with innovations for the confectionery, snacks and bakery markets particularly strong throughout the show last week.

Cargill was recognised for its Indulgence Redefined – an alternative to chocolate developed in collaboration with Voyage Foods – won the Future Foodtech Innovation Award. Voyage is decoupling foods from traditional source raw material — creating new alternatives to the food and drink we love while striving to be more sustainable, scalable and cost effective.

The company’s presence at FiE 2024 highlighted several prototypes, that made the most of its broad portfolio of competencies, which it continues to develop with forging partnerships with emerging enterprises across its portfolio. In addition to its success with Indulgence Redefined, it also scored a second win for its pet care category, for its True Pet postbiotic line, which enhanced its celebrations further.

As the company noted, the backbone of Cargill Indulgence Redefined is Voyage’s patented technology, based on gently roasted and processed regionally available raw materials, providing new alternatives to indulgent treats with a focus on sustainability, fully plant based and with no nuts in the recipe formulation. Described by the judges as “a revolutionary toolkit”, this breakthrough technology offers a range of delicious alternative solutions to cocoa, hazelnut and peanut-based products for bakery, chocolate confectionery, ice cream, and cereals.

Anne Mertens-Hoyng, company category leader for chocolate and ice cream, commented: “The world around us is changing, with a rapidly growing population and a growing demand for more sustainable foods. We need to develop a future-proof food model capable of efficiently replicating consumers’ favourite food products in a more sustainable way. Our unique confectionery alternative to chocolate strives to be planet-friendly with a focus on sustainability, offering consumers the taste they love, without the cocoa.”