KEY INTERVIEW: Agrana Fruit: Innovating by Moving Into ‘Warm’ Flavor Offerings

21 Sep 2015 --- Austrian sugar, starch and fruit commodities company Agrana continues to provide high-quality fruit preparations from its Fruit division, which accounted for 43% of the group’s whole business in 2014. Johannes Kleppers, Chief Executive Officer, Agrana Fruit SAS, took FoodIngredientsFirst through some of the current trends in fruit preparations, as well as the company’s increasingly non-fruit offerings.

“Globally, fruit preparations for the dairy industry is our core business. However, ice cream is a huge market globally and in the Asia Pacific region, foodservice is our main focus.”

“In 2013 Agrana Fruit launched its global positioning “We Love Fruit, from field to cup.” This is our unique selling point and makes us different from our competitors. Everything we do fits in with the global positioning,” explains Kleppers.

When Agrana Fruit works with clients, customized new product development is an integral part of the services it offers. According to Kleppers, the company is involved in more than 600 new fruit preparations per year, each unique in its own way.

“We monitor global market trends very closely,” says Kleppers. “Tailor-made preparations are based on those trends. At the moment, special inclusions such as chocolate pieces or cake and cookie pieces are very popular.”

Of course chocolate & co are not fruit, but diversifying and providing the customer with what he wants is core to Agrana Fruit principles.

“Other hot trends at the moment are fruit combinations such as strawberry and cranberry or mango-passion fruit and seasonal combinations, including pina colada, pineapple and coconut,” says Kleppers.

As well as trends in fruit, there are global trends that affect how consumers eat and one meal experience that keeps coming up is breakfast. While cereal preparation is a big area for Agrana Fruit, particularly maintaining a healthy ratio of fruit to cereal, taking note of the actual trend is also important. According to Kleppers, there is a strong trend towards ancient grains such as quinoa, buckwheat and chia seeds so incorporating those ingredients in new formulations will become more and more relevant.

Sustainability is another area that is very important. Agrana Fruit sees that most of its clients are taking sustainability very seriously and as a provider of fruit from source, Agrana Fruit also sees this as of utmost importance. “It starts with social and environmentally responsible sourcing,” says Kleppers. “We aim to reduce the impact at source by introducing waste water treatment and solar panels at many of our 26 production sites.”

“We do not generally experience high waste as much of the by-products can be further processed into other ingredients such as purées. We also select seedlings of high quality and work with farmers in order to produce the best yield. In this way we try to ensure a low waste level,” says Kleppers.

Moving forward, Agrana Fruit is intent on growing its business in the coming five years. Most of this will come from growing the current fruit preparation business, but Kleppers also sees growth in the non-fruit and frozen businesses.

“The traditional flavors will still dominate,” says Kleppers. “Strawberry remains the number one fruit flavor globally. This is followed by mango and peach. But so-called warm flavors are increasing in popularity. They may not be fruit, but flavors such as chocolate, nuts and caramel are particularly popular and require much adjustment of formula for us to incorporate into our products.”

“As well as the warm flavors and breakfast products, Greek products continue to be successful and this is leading to an increase in high protein demand. Combining other trends such as organic and vegan will be important. But watch out for vegetables: they could lead the next trend as a good combination ingredient.”

As the future looms, Agrana Fruit has put its 2020 plan into action. It identifies the key areas where growth can come from and by setting up cross-functional teams to work on these projects, Agrana Fruit is confident that it will remain a key global player and add value to the fruit preparations marketplace.

By Kelly Worgan