FiE 2024 live: Cargill spotlights confectionery alternatives to chocolate and Voyage Foods partnership
21 Nov 2024 | Cargill
Inge Demeyere, managing director bakery, ice cream and chocolate confectionery at Cargill Food Solutions Europe, points to a very demanding market in the chocolate business with a strong consumer appetite for conscious buying, spotlighting where a product comes from and its health benefits. She highlights Cargill's partnership with Voyage Foods as well as several alternative solutions.
This is Missy Green with Food Ingredients first.
I'm here with Inga Demeida, who is the managing director of bakery, ice cream and confectionery at Cargill Food Solutions Europe.
Welcome, Inga.
Thank you very much.
Happy to be here.
Great to be here too.
So what are some of the trends that Cargill is seeing today in confectionery?
If you look at our demand and if you look at the market.
It's very dynamic in the chocolate business, but we see also that consumers are looking more at conscious buying, so they look at what do they want to eat, where it's coming from, but they also look at healthy, and they want, of course, have the nice experience.
So that are the three trends that are mainly that we see in the market.
And that's also the reason that we are looking for futureproof solutions that are a little bit different than what we have as a traditional chocolate.
And so that's also why we are more and more partnering with companies who bring us also those solutions and Voyage Foods, which we are also promoting here and our partnership in the is one of them.
In what ways do they contribute to a more futureproof chocolate experience?
We created Cargill indulgence redefined as a futureproof range of products, and that's together with Voyage Food, and you need to see it as an alternative solution for cocoa, but also for hazelnut.
And for peanut-based products, and that you can use in bakery, chocolate confectory, ice cream, and in cereals, and it's really the backbone of that Voyage Food partnership is about the technology that they have.
So they have a really patented technology that they are, like we are saying, they are.
Moving away from the traditional raw materials that you know, if you say chocolate, then you think about cocoa, but they are having a process where they use ingredients like grape seeds.
They're gently roasting them.
They bring them together and they make sure that they have the flavor of the traditional.
Products and we make pralines out of that that is healthy also, so you have first of all, it's an alternative for chocolate confectiony, but secondly, you have the sustainability, the carbon footprint which is lower, the water use which is lower, and you have also the healthy trends that you say, OK, it's.
It's nut free and so it's sugary juice.
So I have an example here as a praline that is a hazelnut free, but it tastes like hazelnut and it tastes also like chocolate.
So I'm happy to give you this one and to taste it.
You can also take the other one if you want.
So Yeah So how do you create that flavor by the roasting, or is there also flavors added?
That's the patented technology.
So what we know is that it is indeed, it is indeed a patented.
It's a gently roasting of processing raw materials, but it's not always the same raw materials because it's also tailor-made products.
If a customer, you want to co-create with customers and if a customer is coming and he wants to have a milk chocolate.
Or a dark chocolate or a praline or a hazelnut, then you need to have a tailored solution for that.
So that can be that you have grape seed, but it can also that you have sunflower kernels, and that's roasting with adding the flavors brings the total solution.
So it's not a one fits all.
We have a range of products already today, but it's really an alternative with the same taste.
We try to have the same texture.
But let's say it's an alternative for cocoa, and it's vegan and it's also, let's say dairy-free and nut free, so that's nice now also dairy free.
It's also dairy free, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Are there products right now on the market that use this technology?
They are using the technology already, yes, so it's existing already inpress, and we are the exclusive, as currently we are the exclusive B2B distributors.
For Europe and we are starting to launch now for the first time the products, so we hope that we have a lot of sessions here with the customer to have co-creation and starting with our R&D people then also to make the same recipe because you need to have the right recipe.
For the right application.
That's what I'm also wondering, are there certain applications that this really works perfectly and like Cralis are the perfect one, or are there also ones that's more challenging?
There will be ones that are certainly more challenging, but if you see here what we made with the pralines and the hazelnut, I think we're already very, very progressed on saying for a lot of applications it will go, but it's for sure, it's a journey and for certain applications it will be easier, but that's not different than if we go to chocolates.
Sometimes it's also not so easy to have to have it.
Application, the right taste and the right chocolate.
So that's not so different because it's a confectionery alternative for chocolate, and we want to use it.
You can use it in a bakery, ice cream, chocolate confectiony, but also cereals.
So how could this ingredient be listed on product labels?
I suppose it can't be called chocolate.
So it's chocolate.
Cannot call it chocolate.
It's a chocolate.
It's a chocolate alternative, a confectionary alternative for chocolate.
That's what you can call it, but you cannot label it by chocolate.
You can label it from the sustainability from a carbon footprint.
We also can use let's say the brand of Welsh foods to show also that it's from a sustainability better than.
Then you have the cocoa or the chocolate, but you cannot call it chocolate, and we should also, it's complementary to the markets.
It's not to replace chocolate because we have, we are, we are continuing investing in our chocolate business and the cocoa business.
So you need to see it as a new solution, as a complementary.
To the market because the market is growing.
The market is growing in Europe with 1 to 2% and the markets in the emerging countries are even growing further.
So we need to have alternatives for that, and that's one of the we are very proud of this partnership with.
Thank you very much.
