ISM & ProSweets 2025 live: “Tremendous” cost and supply challenges spur Döhler’s cocoa innovation

With climate change and economic pressures impacting cocoa production globally, the F&B ingredients sector is grappling with immense supply chain and price volatility. In addition, the cocoa industry has faced some long-standing ethical and social challenges, such as fair trade, farmer incomes, and deforestation-linked supply. 

“The challenges are tremendous when it comes to cost, but also availability. And therefore, we need to think of new ways,” Stefanie Engel, global market segment manager for Food at Döhler, tells Food Ingredients First at the ongoing ProSweets 2025 in Cologne, Germany.

The ingredients producer and provider is placing cocoa reduction and replacement, sugar reduction, and plant-based trends front and center with a range of “indulgent” confectionery products on the show floor, including cookies, bars, chocolates, spreads, and fruit jellies.

Tackling cocoa costs and added sugar

Döhler is addressing cocoa reduction with a cookie concept amid a wider industry shift to lower reliance on traditional cocoa production.

“We have sandwich cookies, where we show one with cocoa and one with the cocoa-reduced solution from Döhler, in which we try to mimic the ingredients in the best way when it comes to texture, taste, and all the organoleptic parameters that everyone knows and expects when buying such a product. These solutions can help to adjust the cost of use and production,” says Engel.

She notes that all of Döhler’s ingredients are plant-based, and the company aims to “work with nature” to contribute to environmental sustainability by producing different products that respond to different sustainability requirements.

In addition to taking a keen interest in sustainability, consumers are becoming more health conscious than ever, which has led the F&B industry to enhance sugar reduction innovation and focus more strongly on Nutri-Score credentials.

“We have two varieties of jellies: one is a full sugar solution that comes with a Nutri-Score of D. Then we have a polydextrose solution where we need to adjust the texture and the flavor so that it remains indulgent and feels like a treat, but of course, with better nutritional values. This one has a Nutri-Score of B as a concept, but any individual adaptations are always possible.”

Döhler is addressing cocoa reduction with a cookie concept amid an industry shift to lower reliance on traditional cocoa production.Engel maintains that while mimicking the sugar experience can be challenging, taste and texture remain the “cornerstone of innovation” at Döhler.

“You really want to have a nice mouthfeel when you consume these solutions. The flavor should especially mimic the sugar curve. When you put sugar in your mouth, you have a nice sweetness that lasts for a while. And it’s the hardest to adapt and mimic what sugar does to your mouth into your product. Of course, bulking and texture [challenges] come with that, but taste and texture are key to consumer satisfaction.”

Taste and texture drive innovation

Engel says Döhler is “always reviewing the technologies that we bring to the products and what they do then to the final application” to further enhance the texture of snacks and confectionery products and deliver a multisensory experience.

This means staying close to the application to integrate different textures into different products for the industry.

“For example, if we talk about chocolate, we have a product that leans on the Dubai chocolate trend, for which you need to mimic the softness of the paste but also the crunchiness of the kadayif. Our solution provides the seed paste and a crunch that gives that nice texture. This ingredient is [made with] industrial processing, and it’s not kadayif, but it’s a product that comes close to it,” she explains.

In addition to the pistachio filling for Dubai chocolate, the company is presenting a cocoa hazelnut dark creme and a coconut creme sweet spread. On what trends she sees as key to shaping the future of ingredient solutions for the bakery and confectionery segment, Engel says she expects taste to dominate other parameters.

“Different things influence a consumer to buy a product, such as the packaging, taste, or eye-catching ingredients. However, over 90% of consumers would repurchase a product if the taste was convincing. So in anything we do, we have the taste, overall texture, and mouthfeel to deliver a convincing product.”

“And that is how we start with new concepts, develop products, and present them as an idea to customers. Of course, they can make it their own because they have a brand identity. But our ideas are to make that easier to access and not just offer a powder and a paste for customers to do what they want. We also want to help market these offerings into a consumer product,” she concludes.

ProSweets 2025 is taking place in Cologne from February 2-5 and is co-located with ISM.