Fi Europe 2025: California Natural Color on scaling natural dyes with crystal-color technology
17 Dec 2025 | California Natural Color
California Natural Color’s Dana Osborn, marketing manager, discusses how crystal-color technology transforms the economics of natural dyes, helping brands scale clean label reformulations. She explores technical and regulatory hurdles, supply chain consistency, and how fruit- and vegetable-based colors deliver reliable performance today — plus a look ahead to priorities for 2026 and beyond.
Blue Grids First, supporter of FI Europe 2025 in Paris, and we're here at the California Natural Color Stand with Dana Osborne, Mars manager.
Welcome to you.
Hi, thanks for coming by.
Thank you.
So your proprietary crystal color technology offers 5 to 10 times higher color concentration than traditional liquid natural dyes.
How does that change the economics and scalability for large food or beverage manufacturers?
Yeah, so just kind of.
You know, naturally being higher in color concentration than a liquid, food color, you're already getting some advantages, first being like lower dosage, so in various applications, typical dosages are, are quite lower compared to like a standard, liquid food coloring.
And then, of course, there's, you know, streamlining across, like your supply chain, because of the higher color concentration.
There is, you know, less in freight.
There also are dry, so they don't require refrigeration, so you're saving in, you know, freight, transportation, warehousing, storage, stuff like that.
OK, interesting.
And, as more brands have formulated away from synthetic dyes, what has been the biggest technical or regulatory challenges with switching to natural colors?
And how does your.
Help overcome these challenges.
So being in Europe, obviously a very different market compared to the US, where our company is based.
There are some brands still in Europe that do use synthetic dyes, but for the majority, the market does use natural heat colors way ahead of the US, and we're seeing a lot of scrutiny obviously with all of the regulation and compliance going on.
In the United States now.
And so we're really kind of working with those manufacturers for reformulation, but obviously that can come with challenges.
You know, one is kind of for those manufacturers that have never worked with natural color, really kind of like educating them on the difference between like the synthetic and natural colors is kind of one of those first, like eye-opening, you know, challenges.
You know, natural colors obviously behave very differently in applications compared to a synthetic, where it's typically like, you know, the one size fits all, you know, natural colors, you have to consider like the pH, processing, temperature, you know, any kind of, light that the finished product may be exposed to, and then stability, of course.
And then another, you know, challenge, could be for those.
Those Brands that are, manufacturing products on a global scale, really kind of navigating the compliance.
You know, different markets have different country compliances and stuff like that.
So, maybe, for instance, one, raw material or or color is allowed in a certain country, but not in the US.
And so kind of navigating, those, issues with the Manufacture and kind of working closely with our regulatory team and our R&D team to make sure that they're capitalizing and promoting their products in the markets that they're looking to target.
Yeah, that makes sense.
OK, with natural colors derived from fruits, vegetables, and grapes, how do you ensure supply chain stability and batch to batch color consistency for global customers?
So you know, obviously we manufacture natural color.
We also manufacture, grape juice concentrate and grape seed extract.
So really kind of using that whole part of the grape, as part of our portfolio.
And then being a division of Gallo, we have, the advantage of being vertically integrated with our grape products.
So we can ensure, you know, traceability, and all of that, through our grape portfolio, and then some of our other, portfolios.
Items we work very closely with our raw material partners and suppliers, and then, you know, have really tight specifications and make sure that we have long-term partnerships and relationships and build upon that.
OK, and as a final question, what can you tell us about the future focuses for California Natural Color in 2026 and beyond?
Yeah, so really kind of looking forward, you know, obviously being, with the United States.
Under scrutiny, really kind of working with those manufacturers to help with their reformulation challenges and ensure that they're getting consistency and stability in their applications to meet those kind of tight deadlines for changing from synthetics to natural.
So just working closely with partners on R&D product development teams to support their their product development needs.
That's great, thanks for your time today.
Yeah, thank you so much.
