FiE 2024: Prova helps brands reduce cocoa powder with natural flavors
16 Dec 2024 | Prova
Prova has tailored its flavor solutions to help brands rebalance missing notes after a reduction in cocoa powder. Marie Le Beller, senior product manager, explains why no one-size-fits-all solution exists for brands looking to reduce costs. She also explains some of the factors driving high cocoa prices, such as extreme weather and swollen shoot disease ravaging cocoa trees.
This is Missy Green with Food ingredients first at FIE.
I'm here with Marie Lebela, who's the senior product manager at Prova.
Welcome, Marie.
Thank you.
So Prova is here showcasing some cocoa solutions.
Is this something new for Prova?
So Prova has been in the cocoa solution for extracts and flavor for quite a while now, since the late 90s actually.
But because of this crisis right now, our flavors were able to quickly react to develop new solutions specifically to reduce the cocoa powder without impacting the taste.
So the goal is to really gap all the aromatic notes that are lost during a cocoa powder reduction without bringing any other specific notes in the.
So how is that accomplished?
Good question.
So the way our flavoring works is very application specific, right, so we do not have a one size fits all solution for that because every customer uses a different type of cocoa powder, whether alkaline or natural, different fat content, and also a different amount of cocoa powder.
In their recipes, so we worked on different segments and different applications, and the way our flavors work is that they first analyze the full profile thanks to also the help of our provescence department, which is our sensory analysis department, and they analyzed the global profile of the flavor with the full amount of cocoa powder.
Then they analyzed.
The reduced base, so we realistically aim at a 30% production of cocoa powder, and as you can see they are able to make a profile that shows the difference.
So you will have big gaps in terms of, for example, roasted notes or powdery cocoa notes, bitterness, etc.
And the flavors will rebalance those specific notes that are missing.
Compared to generic usual cocoa solution where you boost everything which would lead to an unbalanced profile in the case of a specific cocoa powder reduction in this economic crisis, so it's nice because you can rebalance completely the profile, including the sweetness, the fattiness, for example, of a product.
So could you give us a little bit of background information about what was this crisis that you mentioned?
Yes, so there are different factors in this crisis.
We saw that because of course of climate change and all the different weather inclements that are hitting West Africa specifically.
Ghana and Ivory Coast, that are the main producing countries for cocoa, the global world production has started to decrease.
On top of that, there is a disease that is damaging the cocoa trees.
It's called the swollen shot, so that also is another factor that decreased the world production.
And on top of that, the production, the cocoa field trees are aging, so they are producing less, and it takes quite a while.
It takes about 5 years from the moment where you plant a cocoa tree to the moment where it's allowed to produce actual cocoa pods.
So all that linked together means that the world production is decreasing a lot.
While the demand remains the same or is slightly increasing, so simple math with that.
You have less production, more demand.
The prices are rising to really historic highs since the 70s actually, and the industrial have to find new solutions to gap that in their recipes.
So is this solution mainly based on extracts and flavors?
They are based on flavors, natural, mainly for our customers in Europe, but we also have other solutions depending on the countries because if the solutions were to contain extracts, then you would have the same problem linked to.
High price of cocoa, right?
So that's why the solutions are cocoa free.
They are declared natural flavor, but to set free from the dependence on the cocoa and the price of the cocoa, the solutions have to be cocoa-free to be to be a sustainable option for price.
