Meurens Natural highlights sustainability and multifunctionality of ingredients at Free From Food 2023
28 Nov 2023 | Meurens Natural
At the recent Free From Food expo in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Meurens Natural presented its ranges of cereal syrups, powders and proteins. The company’s sales and marketing manager, Tim van de Gehuchte, detailed how its plant-based ingredients can add color, taste and texture. He also addresses sustainability goals, sourcing local cereals and upcycling waste materials from oat ingredients production.
This is Yolanda from Food Ingredients First.
I'm here with Tim from Ms Natural, who's the marketing and sales manager, and we are at the Free from Foods fair in Amsterdam.
Tim, thank you for joining us today.
Thank you, Yolanda.
What are you featuring this year?
So sustainability is key at Mern's Naturals, so we are focusing this year again on products that can be sustainable.
So we are coming out.
With millet syrup, millet powders that can be used in a variety of applications such as chocolate, such as giving crunchiness, replacing ordinary sugar syrups, for example.
Millet is a very sustainable crop, so it needs less water.
It has a very short growing cycle, so perfectly.
Fit for our sustainability goals.
On top of that, of course, we keep on focusing on oats because we are the oatologists in the industry.
So that's what we are focusing on this year.
On top of that, we still come out with our plant-based proteins which are actually a byproduct of our process.
So we have a soluble insoluble phase.
We separate out the proteins.
The fiber and we get a concentrate or an isolate depending on the cereal so we are putting forward oat and rice and on top of that we are making crisps, which is a combination of oat proteins and oat flour or another carrier and then we also do the, the texturized version, which is actually oat protein.
Together with pea protein to make meat alternatives such as chicken nuggets, burgers, whatever you can think of.
Interesting.
And of course there's a lot happening at the show with plant-based alternatives to meat, etc.
How do some of your products support developments or formulating new products for that?
All of our products are very multifunctional.
So you can use one ingredient, one plant-based ingredient, to give multiple functionality to an end product such as natural color, natural taste, crunchiness, viscosity.
So that's how we try to support other formulations that are plant-based or that are more flexitarian.
We don't limit ourselves to plant-based.
We look at making the world a little bit.
More healthier, so you can combine them either in purely plant-based or also with a sort of a combination of products.
OK, interesting.
And you were telling me before a little bit about the sustainability initiatives or aspects that the company is focusing on.
Can you expand a bit on that?
Yes, so there are different aspects.
So first of all, there is the energy aspect.
So we have our own solar panels to try to produce as much as possible.
Our own energy.
We have a biogas reactor that can also supply us with energy.
We have a water purification plant where we can purify, of course, our wastewater and then of course zero waste, what we try to achieve by upcycling ingredients so that at the end of the process no raw material gets lost and there is no waste that we have to throw away.
And as a company, what are you looking forward to the coming year?
So we are looking forward to, of course, growing the plant-based business.
We are focusing really on cereals that are very sustainable, very local.
We try to source as much as possible close to home.
For some cereals it's not always possible, but in the vast majority we are able to do that.
We keep on experimenting with.
Different types of our powders and different types of applications, tweaking a bit on the maltodextrine or the sugar content, and of course with the proteins we keep on experimenting with combining them with pea protein.
Maybe we can do that also with fava bean protein.
The nice thing about oat protein is it's very bland.
Has not a lot of taste.
Contrast to a lot of other plant-based proteins such as pea, which can have an intense taste, bringing them together flattens out the taste, which makes it a great ingredient to use it in, as I said, chicken nuggets or burgers and adding the flavor that you want.
Interesting.
And can you also share one of the other products that you haven't mentioned yet how they support.
Formulating clean label ingredients from other examples, so all of our products are naturally made, no chemicals, so they actually are valid for every type of products.
Then we have products with different types of gluten content.
Some cereals do have it.
Other cereals are completely free of gluten, no artificial coloring, no nothing, so it's valid for the whole range.
