Artisan Ice Cream Manufacturer Looks to Rebalance Solution

27/02/06 PreGel, the leading Gelato (Italian artisan-style ice cream) manufacturer, has announced that it will be launching a new range of ice cream mixes for wafers and cones, made with Tate & Lyle’s Ice Cream REBALANCE 022 Solution Set.

The new recipes, which will be in shops and ice cream parlours from Spring 2006, have been specially created for consumers who want to reduce their calorie or fat intake, while still enjoying the full flavour of traditional PreGel gelato. The extended product range will include mixes for low fat, no-added sugar gelato catering for the United States, Australian, South American and UK market and mixes for low fat, reduced-calorie gelato for the European market (UK excluded).
 
Ice Cream REBALANCE 022 comprises a mixture of SPLENDA Sucralose and other specialised Tate & Lyle ingredients that help maintain the gelato’s texture and sweetness. The Solution Set offers manufacturers process-friendly, easy sugar replacement and allows for a lower calorie final product with all the taste and creaminess associated with a regular ice cream.
 
Sucralose is used worldwide in over 4,000 food, beverage and nutritional products and is the sweetening ingredient in SPLENDA No Calorie Sweetener. PreGel will be using the “Sweetened with SPLENDA“ logo for sales in the United States, Mexico, Australia and the United Kingdom due to good brand awareness in these countries.
 
"PreGel has a long history of supplying high quality gelato to a global market, and it was important that we worked with an ingredients company that had a reputation for innovation, as well as great product knowledge and a deep understanding of our market. Most importantly any changes to the formulation had to match the high standard of eating quality our consumers expect from PreGel. Working with Tate & Lyle has enabled us to achieve our goal of developing a range of great tasting reduced-fat, reduced-sugar and no-added-sugar gelato recipes suitable for the whole family.” said Dario Rabboni, Manager and Member of the Board of Directors, PreGel.
 
“We will be promoting the fact that our new range is sweetened with SPLENDA Sucralose by using the "Sweetened with SPLENDA Brand" logo in trade and point of purchase collateral in the Americas, Australia and the UK. SPLENDA Sucralose has great brand recognition in these countries and we hope that consumers who enjoy the great taste of sucralose will love our new wellness gelato.”
 
REBALANCE 022 is a dry mix solution set developed by Tate & Lyle specifically for PreGel. By working in partnership with PreGel’s R&D team, Tate & Lyle reformulated an existing Solution Set to create a combination of ingredients suitable for use in the state-of-the art ice cream machines used in retail outlets and ice cream parlours by PreGel’s customers.
 
“Tate & Lyle is keen to work alongside clients to develop tailored Solution Sets for their needs,” explains Rachel Moffatt, Tate & Lyle’s European marketing manager. “Independent research commissioned by Tate & Lyle has shown that one in four consumers believes that reducing fat and sugar levels are the most important improvements that can be made to ice cream, while 73% of current ice cream buyers would ‘definitely’ or ‘probably’ buy a low-fat, low-sugar ice cream. REBALANCE 022 offers PreGel’s retailers the opportunity to sell traditional gelato in wafers and cones with a much lower calorie count. Our partnership also means that PreGel can use the well-recognised “Sweetened with SPLENDA“ logo on their marketing and points of sale materials.”

The gelato mixes, which come in chocolate, cream, cappuccino and raspberry flavours, were piloted by PreGel at the Sigep trade fair in Rimini this January. They were well received with many tasters commenting they could not tell the difference between standard sugar ice cream and the products made with Ice Cream REBALANCE 022.