KEY INTERVIEW: Business as Usual For Taura as it Eyes Healthy Snacking
08 Oct 2015 --- The creation of a unique compressed restructured fruit product made from extruded fruit purée has been more than just an innovation on the healthy snacks platform, it has created a whole new category, one that is growing all the time. Raf Vanlommel, Taura Marketing Manager in Europe, spoke to FoodIngredientsFirst about what the takeover by Frutarom means and how he sees the market for fruit snacking growing.
“The food industry is definitely on a healthy wave at the moment, and this has helped Taura as it grows its business,” says Vanlommel. “Our URC technology enables fruit in a very low water activity environment and this increases the shelf life of the real fruit product without the need for preservatives.”
“Our products are made from real fruit, sourced globally. But we can also buy raw materials in a specific region to claim provenance. This, together with the natural claims and free-from status, makes our fruit ingredients highly desirable in a clean label environment,” says Vanlommel.
This is something that Taura will emphasise at the forthcoming Food Ingredients Europe (FiE) exhibition, where its tagline will read ‘Rooted & Real’. “Rooted & Real stands for clean, clear, rooted, so authentic, and sends a strong message about what our products are about.”
Indeed, the company broke all sales records in June and continues to ride on the wave of nutritional food products, including nutritional bars, a category which is has created and grown by the use of its technology.
The trend for fruit snacking is more established in the US, says Vanlommel, but it is making a big impact in Europe, particularly in the UK, but also in France, where this kind of fruit product was not known at all.
Vanlommel explains that Taura has worked very closely with a number of companies to produce a product that offers a better and cleaner alternative for children than just sweetened snacks. It would change the way that consumers eat fruit as a snack. The idea of moulded fruit pieces, made from real fruit, is still relatively new in this form but has reached a tipping point and the company expects strong growth from this segment.
The next area that Taura is looking at for growth will be the changing breakfast market. As breakfast becomes more of a snack than a meal occasion, with more people eating breakfast on the go, there will be opportunities to tap into that market, as well. As Vanlommel remarks, snackification of breakfast is about more than just breakfast cookies or cereal bars.
“As the market for breakfast snacking grows, so does the consumer realisation that many cereal bars are full of sugar. Nutritional baked snacks are taking over the breakfast market as people eat more breakfast on the go,” he says. “If we could tap into the market for a healthy snack bar, based on an apple puree to bind the bars, for example, then we would be serving a health cereal bar, not bound by a sugar-based ingredient. This would position a snacking breakfast as part of a healthy lifestyle.”
“Another area for growth is the addition of non-fruit ingredients,” says Vanlommel. “The addition of chia seeds, for example, gives products an omega-3 offering and could see the cereals market fighting back and winning back part of the market that has abandoned cereals in favor of a more healthy product.”
The stable top five fruit flavors will remain the same for the time being, says Vanlommel, but there are some new fruit innovations to look out for. Super fruits such as acai, goji and blueberry are set to become much more widespread and under new owners Frutarom, Taura will be taking advantage of shared resources with other Frutarom companies.
“It remains ‘business as usual’ here at Taura, but there are some big advantages to being part of a company such as Frutarom. Not least the use of shared application laboratories and the opportunity to have a bigger impact on local markets,” he explains. “There are some interesting insights coming from the opportunity to share knowledge and it is a very exciting time to be part of Taura.”
“There are some interesting new fruit trends coming and that, combined with the opportunity to be a part of a trend in emerging markets, means that anything can be on the table at any time. Frutarom is growing very quickly and it sees Taura as a unique concept that is also right on-trend. The future is very exciting."
By Kelly Worgan
