PureCircle breakthrough: stevia cocoa & vanilla flavor enhancers

18 Jul 2017 --- PureCircle have launched new stevia leaf-based flavor enhancers which are set to significantly augment both vanilla and cocoa flavors, enabling companies to produce products at a manageable price point.

The new products can be labelled as natural flavors on product ingredient labels. These breakthroughs build on PureCircle’s extensive range of flavors which allows them to enhance key benefits such as mouthfeel, sweetness quality and different tonalities across a wide range of applications.

According to PureCircle, consumer demand for natural cocoa and vanilla ingredients has never been stronger. 

PureCircle’s new flavor enhancers bolster companies’ supply of limited cocoa and vanilla ingredients, and thereby diversify risk strategies by introducing a plant-based solution. These new products will allow developers to reduce the amounts of cocoa and vanilla alongside sugar without compromising taste.

Commodity markets for cocoa and vanilla can be highly volatile. In 2016, cocoa prices fluctuated between US$2,000 and US$3,000 per metric ton. Following much publicized flooding and other issues, experts have estimated that vanilla will exceed US$500/kg.

These new stevia leaf discoveries enable PureCircle to engage with customers active in the US$12bn cocoa market and US$1bn vanilla market (based on current prices).

Along with these flavor enhancer discoveries, PureCircle’s innovative stevia sweeteners continue to see heavy adoption as they enable low-calorie and zero-calorie formulations of food and beverages. PureCircle is continuing its leadership role in the research, development and innovation to produce a growing supply of multiple varieties of stevia sweeteners.

Commenting on the breakthrough, Faith Son Head of Marketing and Innovation said: “We are excited to have an opportunity to meet new needs of our customers by introducing these flavor enhancers that specifically address cocoa and vanilla. We strive to uncover new properties within the stevia leaf, and this breakthrough enables us to service new markets and customers in a meaningful way. PureCircle is committed to maximising the full potential extracted from each leaf, and we believe our ability to reduce sugar and enhance key flavor tonalities naturally will be a winning combination.” 

“Understanding the synergies of the steviol glycosides and identifying which specific ones perform best as a flavor modifier can be very complex. PureCircle’s commitment to innovation and years of collaborating with food developers has yielded the high-level of stevia expertise necessary to help companies achieve great taste working with our plant-based ingredient - stevia,” Son tells FoodIngredientsFirst.

“With consumer interest growing and supply fluctuations around natural cocoa and vanilla, we have seen an accelerating demand for these natural origin flavor modifiers,” explains Son.

Are there any further innovations planned off the back of this? “We are always looking to better understand how the different parts of the stevia leaf can help taste performance from both a flavor modifier and sweetener perspective.”

by Elizabeth Green