IFE Manufacturing 2026 live: Atura unlocks high-protein products with chickpea, fava bean, and red lentil flours
01 Apr 2026 | Atura Proteins
Paul Donegan, commercial development and marketing manager, explains how Atura’s chickpea, fava bean, and red lentil protein ingredients help food manufacturers create clean label products. He also addresses the challenges food manufacturers face when incorporating plant proteins and how Atura provides tailored solutions, playing a key role in developing popular new products in the growing plant-origin food sector.
Foo Greens first reporting from IFE Manufacturing in London, and we're here at the Attura protein stand with Paul Donegan.
So Paul, can you tell us what you're showcasing today in terms of plant-based solutions?
Can you explain how your ingredients differentiate from other companies on the market?
Yeah, today we're showcasing a range of pulse proteins.
We work with chickpea, fava bean, and lentil.
Produce different types of proteins for different types of applications.
Today we're showcasing proteins for fava bean and chickpea protein, specifically for nutritional applications and also working with the same proteins in various food applications.
So today we've got a protein fortified coffee, we've got a protein enhanced cheese or cream cheese, and we've got a protein ball.
All using our ingredients.
The way we work differently is very much working from a very strong technical platform, so we're very much about collaborating with customers and really delivering solutions around our ingredients.
That's interesting.
So can you tell us more about how these ingredients support food manufacturers in creating clean labeled, sustainable, and, as you mentioned, high protein products?
One of the challenges with high protein is being able to achieve.
Source of high in protein claims without impacting the overall quality or mouthfeel or texture of the product.
So we have a lot of expertise with our proteins to achieve those sort of goals.
We also have a very big focus on research and development and application work to have the knowledge and understanding of how the proteins can work in a wide range of applications, whether that be bakery, nutritional beverage.
And meet alternative type applications.
OK, so with the increasing demand for plant-based solutions from consumers, what do you see as the biggest challenges for food manufacturers when incorporating plant proteins, and how does Arturo address these challenges?
One of the challenges is being able to achieve a high customer experience in the products, so ensuring the product quality is of the highest standard.
Customers.
Very strong to go for high quality products and if they don't like something, they will vote for their wallets very quickly.
So it's really important that companies can achieve that high standard to retain customers and achieve repeat purchases, and that really comes down to quality.
When you're incorporating plant proteins, you need to make sure that things like the mouth feel, the texture, the taste, all of those things are really delivering to a very high standard.
Standard and I think that's really the big challenge, and that's where you need, you know, a very strong technical partner and ingredient supplier that can really deliver on all that, you know, delivering both knowledge, product insight, and then selecting the right ingredient that's going to make all the difference.
OK, so as you mentioned, industry collaboration is very important.
Can you tell us how your company collaborates with companies to tailor protein solutions for specific applications or formulations?
We work very closely.
We like to start when we're talking to customers to understand exactly what they're trying to achieve.
For example, with a beverage in the beverage category, very often customers are looking for clean taste and they're looking for something that really wouldn't have too much functionality.
So we try to deliver on those sort of requirements and objectives, but you can have other requirements as in terms of color, in terms of specific taste profiles, etc.
We try to understand what the, not only what our ingredient is doing, but what other ingredients are in the formulation really to get a better understanding of how to optimize our ingredients.
OK, perhaps to end, you can share some success stories or case studies where a tourist protein solutions have played a key role in the development of innovative new products.
We've had a lot of success in nutritional applications where customers are trying to sometimes using plant proteins to replicate the the mouthfeel and texture that you.
Get with dairy proteins, which is typically a very nice creamy mouthfeel, a very, very whole feeling on the palate, and we work with different proteins, but particularly chickpea protein, 70%.
We're the only producer in Europe of this particular high protein product, and we've been able to use chickpea protein with its slightly higher fat content compared to other plant proteins to really deliver in terms of mouth feel texture and generals.
Paul.
