Premium convenience, global flavors and healthy snacking dominate IFE Manufacturing

26 Mar 2024 --- Ready-to-go convenience foods, novel flavors, healthy snacks and natural ingredients proliferated the show floor at yesterday’s opening of the IFE Manufacturing trade show in London. Food Ingredients First spoke to key players about an abundance of innovative, fun and flavorful concepts.

Themes include premium-positioned but healthful concepts presented to deliver on taste and functionality. 

Sophisticated snacking and popcorn concepts were featured prominently this year. 

Olga Burmistr, export manager at Ukrainian company Boomza, tells us: “We wanted to create a snack range that replaces potato chips and popcorn and is much healthier and cheaper. Consumers nowadays want organic foods with natural colorings, so that is what we have created and with a healthier positioning.”

Novel tastes
Tapping into dishes and cuisines from Ukraine, some of the flavors are particularly novel, such as dill pickle, jellied meat and horseradish and mushroom. Some of the more traditional savory snacking flavors include tomato, BBQ and cheese bacon.

Asian flavors are also a point of interest for the company, as “consumers find them quite appealing and often are interested in spicy flavors.”

Olga Burmistr, export manager at Ukrainian company Boomza.The novelty plays out in the colors that the popcorn also has, with Burmistr commenting that children are one of the company’s main consumer groups, as they seem drawn to the caramelized colored popcorn. “We also only use natural colors that are regulated in the markets that we sell them.”

Oats for any time of day
The ready-to-go convenience foods space was also booming, with plant-based ingredients such as oast being the shining star. 

Chris Moore, head of sales at Soak’d Oats, exhibited its high-fiber breakfast bar, which can be eaten at any time of the day, on-the-go and with all-natural good-for-you ingredients. “There’s not a time where this product can’t fit into the day,” he says. 

“We are really leveraging the fiber in the product as most UK consumers aren’t hitting their recommended daily intake (RDI) of fiber. They’re approximately about 10 g off of fiber per day. Our product gives 8 g of fiber, so it can really boost daily intake,” he remarks. 

Further, the oat bars are vegan, gluten-free, 100% natural and with no added sugars. “They have a great sweet taste, but that’s simply from the ingredients we use in the bars.”

Freeze-dried fruit chips
Also tapping into taste using simple natural ingredients is a company called Giving Tree Ventures, whose offerings include freeze-dried fruit and vacuum-fried vegetable snacks. 

The company also observed the snack market “being saturated with potato-based chips and crisps and wanted to offer a better and healthierGiving Tree Ventures offers freeze-dried fruit and vacuum-fried vegetable snacks. version, using minimal ingredients that taste just how nature intended.”

Broccoli, cauliflower and sweet pea are some of the highlights for vegetables and strawberry, peach and mango are some of the concepts on the fruit snacks side. 

Tayo Ogundipe, outreach manager at the company, says: “We started out with some core products and expanded from there. Our main goal is to target healthy eating, but since doing some market research in the space, we have found that people are interested in our products to give to children, who maybe don’t eat as many vegetables or fruits. But actually, because they are a crunchy snack, they are very appealing to both children and adults.”

Another benefit to the range is that they only use one ingredient for the fruits and two ingredients for the vegetable crisps; the second ingredient is a little bit of oil. 

“We are really tapping into the low ingredient space, and although our prices are not the cheapest, people are realizing that they are paying for less desirable ingredients, and our product is positioned on the healthier premium snack space,” Ogundipe notes.

Global ingredients
The trade show also gathered exhibitors from all corners of the globe, showcasing ways of using their country’s legacy ingredients and bringing them to life in unusual concepts. 

One such example is the use of cumin and carom (ajowan) seeds, which are used predominantly in Indian cooking. 

Soranjeet Ahudja, company director at The Food Supply.The Food Supply company has won several awards for its cookie creations, which harness local ingredients from India and deliver an interesting, sweet, yet savory cookie biscuit. 

According to Soranjeet Ahudja, company director, the business wants to “bridge the gap in the UK between Asian and English heritage and become available in the major supermarkets in the country.”

“We want people to know that these ingredients are versatile and can be used in sweet food applications,” he says.

The company also sells high-grade, audited saffron from Spain. There have been a lot of issues with adulterated versions, Ahudja tells us. “But with our high-grade saffron, the test results we have back exceed the minimum requirement, so the quality is much higher than many other suppliers.”

Another company harnessing the power of unique Indian and ancient ingredients is Healicious, which presents a range of millet concepts and ingredients inspired by heritage and common ingredients in India. 

Aparna Chainani, co-founder of the company, explains: “We are making food products out of millets, which are ancient grains, they are 5,000 years old, they are incredibly good for you, good for the gut, high in protein, and we like to think of them as healing grains in India.”

The start-up company, during IFE Manufacturing, is “soft launching,” according to Chainani, and is developing products like pasta that is gluten-free and ready-to-eat millet grains that can be used instead of rice or cous cous and can simply be heated up and eaten with curry or another dish. 

“Millet is now a staple ingredient in our house, and as Chainani is celiac, she believes that consuming millet in these various forms “has improved her gut health.”

“We don’t want people to eat millet because it’s a health fad, but we want them to consume it because it’s a tasty alternative pseudo grain andHealicious is harnessing the power of Indian and ancient ingredients like millet. doesn’t have any of the bad things that other ingredients have,” she says. 

Meanwhile, Sri Lankan ingredients were also delivering on taste at the trade show. Brand Little Big Flavour Kits harness authentic Sri Lankan curry spices in its sustainably sourced and vegan-friendly packs. 

Aliza Patell Ratnayaka, co-founder of the company, tells us: “Our kits are fully recyclable and the ingredients are individually wrapped. So, for example, if you’re feeding the family and you don’t want to use the full amount of chili, you can tailor it to meet the tastes of everyone enjoying the meal.”

The coconut milk sachets are powdered coconut milk, which also has a longer shelf life, she adds. 

By Elizabeth Green, reporting live from the IFE Manufacturing event in London