KEY INTERVIEW: Sensient Innovation Buoyed by Regulatory Changes

20 Sep 2016 --- Sensient Flavors and Fragrances offer solutions tailored to meet the needs of today’s consumers and have been doing so for more than 130 years. Using innovative technology, Sensient provide their customers with a competitive advantage by offering a versatile product library and an experienced team of flavorists, application scientists and chefs who implement advanced technical solutions for even the most complex product development challenges.

FoodIngredientsFirst caught up with CEO, Paul Manning, who addressed the changing trends that Sensient are responding to in colors and flavors. “The trend outside of Europe towards natural colors is well under way, not only in the Americas but also in Asia Pacific,” he claims. “The Middle East is also a more recent addition to that significant trend towards natural colors. In Europe, they really made this move several years ago, where manufacturers demand minimally processed colors, made through water extraction and the avoidance of solvents.”

So what are the main opportunities for flavors? Manning admits that there is a similar trend for flavors, albeit not as neatly defined. He says: “In terms of flavors it is more about being minimally processed and extracted using water and other non-solvent based extractions. These flavors can substitute for things like sugar and salt and these other additives, which depending on the region, are viewed less and less favorably.”

With the new FDA guidelines surrounding sodium, Manning highlights a stronger interest from Sensient’s consumer base, in terms of flavor technologies that can substitute for salt. He goes on to explain: “When people start talking about substituting for things like fat or sugar or salt, what really differentiates one flavor company from another is the ability to really mimic the taste, texture and overall experience generated by these much cheaper ingredients like salt, for example.” 

Manning adds: “This where flavor companies spend quite a bit of time in technologies, which allow flavors to mask or block certain tastes.”

With regards to flavors, Sensient utilize extracts as an alternative to synthetic flavors, here again the need to have that very strong taste blocking and taste masking technology, is profoundly important to the customer. “They do not only want it to taste the same, they want it to present the same overall impression in the eyes of the consumer,” he notes. 

“Similarly on natural colors, what customers want are solutions that fundamentally match synthetic color alternatives, but also do so economically,” explains Manning. “Most of our customers are very adamant that the natural version must match the synthetic version visually. Anything less, the customers are less inclined to buy the natural version. Kids in the US don’t eat dull, water washed colors in cereals.”

For Sensient, regulations are seen as an interesting challenge. “We love any regulation that comes out, because it’s an opportunity for us to compete very strongly with our portfolio that we have been developing for years,” he says. “For instance, GMO-free is a very strong trend in Europe and certainly Japan, so we provide a lot of common products like hydrolyzed vegetable protein, in a non-GMO form. From my standpoint, I’m actually glad that the market has caught up to where we are now, because we have been doing non-GMO for years on many of our products.”

“Many of our core products present themselves very well on a label, so I think we are well positioned to continue to capitalize on that trend,” Manning adds. 

How do you expect the market to change over the next five years? “If I can point to one trend that is going to pick up significantly, it’s going to be product safety,” contends Manning, “We are seeing a lot of evidence in these markets of suppliers and others short changing customers.”

Sensient recently introduced a program called CERTASURE, which allows a statement of the safety and reliability of the raw material that is being used in a formulation. “We are the only company that has this standard for natural colors, because while synthetic colors are a highly regulated market, natural colors are not,” explains Manning. 

CERTASURE essentially serves as the regulatory equivalent of a synthetic color, with a very robust set of standards, highly reproducible results that we test and verify for our customers, so that they can be sure that what they are getting from Sensient is very safe.

“I think this concern is only going to increase as more and more raw materials and suppliers enter the market. While regulators can certainly set standards, their enforceability is quite complicated right now,” he says. “CPG companies have to rely on their suppliers, because the risk to public health can be quite considerable. When you introduce a raw material that may be high in bacteria, heavy metal, or pesticides, these can be real considerations for public health. So this is why you need to be very clear who you are buying this material from. This is why Sensient stamps its natural colors with Certasure. We didn’t just take what a supplier sold us. We tested it very compressively. That’s the assurance CPG companies should expect.”

He also adds: “Any product that are derived from natural sources, botanicals and otherwise, are far more susceptible to contamination from bacteria, herbicides, pesticides and heavy metals. Unless you are specifically testing for those contaminants, you aren’t necessarily going to find them.”

“Sensient, as a supplier to the food industry, has to have a very broad based range of capabilities and testing methods to evaluate those raw materials, because we have seen areas of concern in many different raw materials and countries around the world,” Manning states. 

“Another area is organic. Organic is terrific, but what the consumer needs to understand is that the risk profile is far greater than what it is for a processed food. Organic isn’t treated and doesn’t have the same level of kill steps and other processing techniques available that a processed food would. You’re not subjecting these crops to chemi¬cal treatment which may eliminate certain types of bacteria. As a result, if this food is not properly screened, then you’re now intro¬ducing these contaminants to the market on a very broad scale.”

What does the future hold for Sensient? “Things are looking very good for us,” confirms Manning. “We embarked on a restructuring program a couple of years ago, to consolidate a lot of the facilities that we had acquired over the years. I think that has had a very important impact on focusing our business and taking out a lot of the costs. We also made a concerted effort to really emphasize the flavor and technology components of our portfolio, so I think those two factors are very important. The third element is that we have spent a lot of time with customers, providing an inte¬grated solution of color and flavor. This has had the effect of speeding and simplifying a lot of their de¬velopment time, because we are proving the sensory and analyti¬cal data for two key raw materials: colors and flavors. I think flavors has made a tremendous amount of progress over the last couple of years. We are very positive and I think there is a good business outlook for our flavors segment for the next 5-10 years,” he concludes. 

by Elizabeth Kenward