Making More from Milk and Fruit

Döhler has identified four worldwide mega trends that transcend national and regional differences: Lightness, Naturalness, Functionality and Premium Enjoyment.

05/05/08 Milk, along with water, is mankind’s oldest drink. Milk delivers a unique mouthfeel and quality and carries with it emotional and cultural values for nearly every human being around the world. While traditional, basic dairy categories may be experiencing slowdown and stagnation in some developed global markets, innovation and imagination are capable of delivering enormous growth potential. This churn of new ideas is constantly refreshing and renewing the milk industry and bringing exciting growth and success opportunities.

The DöhlerGroup is one of the world’s leading suppliers of fruit juice concentrates, fruit preparations, flavours, ingredients systems, emulsions and colours for the dairy and beverage industry. This special focus coupled with many years experience gives the company expertise across all the technologies and techniques essential to the processing of milk with fruit and flavours.

Döhler’s global market research abilities coupled to its 17 production and application centres worldwide enable it to rapidly identify country specific and wider market trends at the outset and interpret them into tailor-made product concepts for customers. Delivering a comprehensive one-stop in-house service is the DöhlerGroup’s daily commitment via professional product development, applications and sensory science teams to ensure that customers receive market tuned samples that precisely conform to their product engineering requirements. This comprehensive service package is further enhanced by active assistance and advice on all end of line issues including filling, product in-pack behaviour and microbiology.

Döhler has identified four worldwide mega trends that transcend national and regional differences: Lightness, Naturalness, Functionality and Premium Enjoyment. These demand pull criteria underline the importance of a strategic, evolving development programme for fruit preparations, flavours, functional ingredients and sweeteners.

Pure Enjoyment
Whatever the product preference, whether full bodied chocolate, sweet strawberry or exotic acai ultimately it’s all a matter of taste. In reality there are as many potential taste variations as there are people on the planet – so around 6.7 billion at the last count! The DöhlerGroup makes it its business to understand the nuances of flavour preferences within defined markets and to deliver the very best solutions from across the world for its customers. Leading the way in the dessert market are the classic flavours of chocolate, vanilla and caramel. From these alone Döhler has developed a vast portfolio to meet national and even regional taste preferences. In the yoghurt, drinking yoghurt and whey segment, by contrast, fruity taste profiles are preferred. On balance, the closer one goes towards the country of origin of the fruits the riper and fuller the taste preference of consumers. These minute differences in taste preferences can be accurately pinpointed by DöhlerGroup’s experienced sensory science team and then transformed into precisely targeted product solutions by the company’s team of talented flavourists.

Underlining this entire process is the integrity and stability of Döhler’s flavours, a guaranteed quality standard irrespective of product shelf life length.

Diversity and great quality
To deliver the highest quality fruit preparations, knowledge of the whole world of fruits is essential – from the Brazilian orange to the Indian mango. Every fruit has its own unique characteristics in taste, colour stability and performance in pack. Due to Döhler’s long established global raw materials procurement ability and its close relationship with fruit growers and processors this knowledge of fruit is guaranteed. Customers can be assured of the finest quality fruits whether native, exotic or brand new variety. An ability to immediately process the pick of the fruit crop right in the heart of the fruit growing region is another key reason for the superb quality of Döhler flavours, fruit juice concentrates and fruit purees.

Döhler’s rounded abilities, from the fruit to the finished product, enables the company to overcome the impact of harvest related taste fluctuations through the application of flavour technology – delivering exceptional consistency and taste stability to finished products.

A feast for the eyes!
Just as with taste, colour preferences vary from country to country. Eastern European countries have a likeness for brightly coloured dessert products while most Western European nations prefer colours representative of the natural fruit. Wherever and whatever the market, the right food appearance and colour are fundamental to creating an appetising, well positioned presentation to trigger a purchase decision.

The DöhlerGroup has a broad portfolio of colouring foodstuffs, colouring plant extracts and natural colours and food colours. Wide experience in all aspects of basic ingredient development ensures that the most stringent and exacting colour stability requirements are met. The technical challenge of delivering a perfect ‘swirl’ of white mass and fruit requires the technology, experience and colours to keep colour migration to an absolute minimum – the DöhlerGroup is able to fully meet and exceed these standards as a matter of routine.

Making more out of milk!
A healthy lifestyle and a balanced diet are increasingly important today. There is an outstanding development opportunity within the dairy industry for innovative products that offer a functional added value benefit alongside taste enjoyment. Products that can help address key health issues like the cardiovascular system and anti-ageing (especially skin, bone and joint health) are receiving strong demand. Adding extra minerals, Q10, soya extracts or collagen to, for example, drinking yoghurts, spoonable yoghurts or whey drinks, boosts functionality and added value payloads. The DöhlerGroup offers an extensive range of class leading, stable functional ingredients within expertly designed formulations to ensure simple production application.

Intelligent sweetening systems
The demand for light products is growing across food categories. Low calorie and health oriented dairy products have been enjoying a boom in demand in recent years. Under the MultiSweet Plus umbrella brand the DöhlerGroup has developed sweetening systems which not only deliver great reduced calorie tastes but also provide the body with an optimum payload of specific functional ingredients, from tailored energy profiles to targeted health benefits. MultiSweet Fruit, the sweetener made from 100% fruit with a sugar comparable sweetening intensity and a low glycaemic index, brings natural positioning potential to perfectly round off Döhler’s sweetening portfolio.

www.doehler.com