ISM & ProSweets 2025: Döhler unveils ingredient solutions to “tremendous” cocoa challenges
06 Feb 2025 | Döhler
At ProSweets 2025, Döhler responded to cocoa supply volatility and sugar reduction demands with innovative ingredient solutions. Stefanie Engel, the company’s global market segment manager for Food, highlights cocoa-reduced cookies, sugar-reduced jellies, and trend-driven confectionery concepts, emphasizing taste and texture as key to consumer satisfaction amid inflation and sustainability concerns.
Hi, this is Anvisha for food ingredients first.
I'm here with Stephanie Engel, global market segment manager food at Doula.
Thanks for being with us, Stephanie.
What are you presenting on the show floor today?
We have different products here to show.
Our ingredients work in in confectionery products, and chocolate-based and also sugar and gum confectionery.
We also have some bars with us and some cookies and.
Have different topics we want to focus on.
We want to look into sugar reduction.
We want to look into cocoa reduction and cocoa replacement.
We also have some indulging concepts with us, and plant-based is of course a big topic that we want to look at.
How do Douller's cocoa alternatives, which you're also presenting today, help brands maintain taste and texture while reducing reliance on cocoa since the industry is facing so many challenges?
Yes, the challenges are tremendous, of course, when it comes to cost, but also when it comes to availability and therefore we need to think new ways and we have two approaches here that we can show.
So one thing is we have sandwich.
We show one with cocoa and one with a cocoa reduced solution from Dola where we try to mimic the ingredients in the best way when it comes to texture, when it comes to taste, when it comes to the all organic eptic parameters that everyone knows and expects when buying such a product, and those solutions can give you help to adjust the cost and use.
And the production costs, of course.
Great, thanks for sharing.
Consumers are also becoming more and more health conscious than ever.
How do your sugar reduction solutions ensure that confectionery products remain indulgent without compromising flavor?
We have worked on different solutions.
So for example, here we have two varieties of jellies.
One is a full sugar solution that comes with a score of D and here we worked on a polydextrose solution but we also need to adjust, of course the texture but also the flavor so that it is still indulging and feeling like a treat what you're doing there.
But of course with better nutritional values, so this one has a neutral score of B just as a concept, of course any individual adaptions are always possible, but you can convince yourself if our solution is working.
Great, and what specific benefits do these ingredients offer beyond sugar reduction?
Yeah, I already mentioned it, so you really don't want to compromise on taste, on texture, and you really want to have a nice mouthfeel when you put it in your mouth, and the flavor should especially mimic the sugar curve.
When you put sugar in your mouth, you also have a nice sweetness that lasts for a while in your mouth, and when you need to adapt to that.
This is the hardest part to really also mimic what sugar does to your mouth and to your product, of course, bulking and texture and all the stuff that comes up with it.
For sure, taste and texture are definitely key to consumer satisfaction.
How are you innovating to enhance multi-sensory experiences, and you've talked a bit about.
This already, but is there anything that you're doing to further enhance the texture of snacks and confectionery products?
We are always reviewing the technologies that we bring to the products and what they do then to the final application.
We are selling products to the industry and then they are.
Somehow further produced to the application for the consumer and of course we always try to be very close to the application to understand what's happening there and how to integrate different textures into different products.
For example, if we talk about chocolate products, we also have a product that is kind of leaning on the trend of Dubai chocolate and of course you need to mimic the softness of the.
Paste, but also the crunchiness of the kay, and we found a solution to it where we provide the nut paste and seed paste, the pistachio paste, for example, but also a crunch that brings the nice texture but is industrial processing and it's not, but it's a product that comes close to it for sure.
How do doula's natural ingredients solutions contribute to sustainability?
Of course we are also a sustainable company and all our ingredients are plant-based.
We really have our programs where we work on it, but we work with the nature and of course there are different products that we come along with the sustainability requirements.
So there are a few flavors that you're showcasing such as the viral Dubai chocolate.
And hazelnut dark cream and coconut creme.
What trends are you seeing shape the future of ingredient solutions for the bakery and confectionery segment?
I think, of course, there are many different things that influence a consumer to buy a product.
It can be the packaging, it can be the taste or the ingredient that comes to mind and that is eye-catching.
But over 90% of the consumers would just buy a product again if the taste was convincing.
So anything that we do, we have the taste and the overall texture and mouthfeel in mind to really have a convincing product.
And this is how we develop our product and how we start with new concepts and give this as an idea to customers, and they can of course make it their own because they have their own brands and they want to have their own.
Iconic brand identity and therefore our ideas are just, let's say to make it easier to access and not just come with a powder or a paste and then make up your mind and do what you want to do.
We also want to help to market it into a really consumer product.
So would you say then that taste is the cornerstone of innovation at Dooler?
Yes, yes, I would definitely say that.
Great, thanks for your time.
Thank you.
