Sourcing Ingredients for Coloring Foods
26 Sep 2014 | GNT
“Our coloring foods bring color to 25 billion servings of food per year. While this seems like a large number, if you compare it to the world population, there is still plenty of room to grow. But, if you look at the actual number of acres that we need, it is a relatively tiny amount, because it all comes down to the seeds we use. If you grow fruits and vegetables that innately have very high concentrations of color, the yield is very high,” say Frederik Hoeck, Joint Managing Director of GNT.
This is Rob Moys at GNT's production facilities in Heinsberg, Germany, and I'm here with Frederick Hook from G&T.
Frederick, can you tell me about the production is just starting on the the new harvest.
Can you tell me some of the things that you're seeing right now?
Yeah, Robin, what we saw today is we just started our, our fresh campaign and we are currently in the spot here, facility Heinsberg.
We just processed, we started to process the black carrot.
And blackhe obviously is a very nice product for us and it is resembles more the the the key, what is GNT is all about.
We process real food.
And into food colors, and the coloring food, and this is the key message of what GNT is all about.
We, all raw materials are really food and we would, yeah, we would actually only process raw materials that we would ourselves eat like, like this carrot, for example, the raw material.
And the same raw materials you will see in our production facility.
And this really represents what our consumers are also looking for.
They want to have the full traceability.
They want to know what is in the products and with our GNT products we can give our customers a clear labeling strategy and you will see our our products in in the industry products and you can see the clear labeling without any numbers or people, consumers directly know what is in there.
In the products, yeah.
For example, it would be a concentrate out of an apple, blackcurrant, a carrot, or a hibiscus, but this gives consumers a clear idea of how their products are colored, like their gummy bears, for example.
Are there any trends that you see happening in terms of sourcing and types of new raw materials that you're working and processing?
We always look at new possibility and new raw materials, but certainly our, our carrot business is very important and we are also sure that maybe that there will not be the next raw material like, like a black carrot or like a carrot, but we, we keep our eyes open and have a look at new, new raw materials and have a look what what colors we can, we can derive out of them, but it's always important, they have to be a food, real food.
Are there other trends that you see happening in the market in terms of coloring foods being adopted by your customers and what's happening in the marketplace?
We certainly see that coloring foods are becoming more and more mainstream and that the consumers really want to have a clear labeling on their products, and this clear labeling only can give coloring foods.
And in terms of new application areas that that you're working towards or that your customers are involved in, actually, maybe some 20 years ago, consumers or the industry had the perception that coloring of food do not work in in all applications.
GNT has developed a broad range of products which really work in in the most of applications, so.
Whatever application there is, coloring food can be an option.
Frederick, can you tell me a little bit about, the sourcing from farmers for your raw materials?
Yes, of course, Robin.
You see, what makes GT special is that, we really own the process of raw material sourcing.
That means we have our own agronomists.
They go out, talk to the farmers.
We, even breed our own seed, that's natural, breeding, so no, no GMO, we.
We go to the farmers and plant plant the seeds with the farmers and take them by the hand and teach them how to grow our our products, so we, we control the whole, the whole process of raw material production.
This gives us a lot of strength.
We can influence the raw materials more, the color use.
We can have some control on this, and you have work with set prices, so you're not influenced by, for example, the Russian situation right now.
No, we're not influenced by the Russian situation at all.
We have a long term contract with our farmers, so we have fixed price contracts, and our farmers know.
Advance, mostly one year in advance, they know at what price they can deliver the raw material to us, and it doesn't matter for us if it's a very big carrot or a small carrot, for example.
It has to be a very healthy carrot, and there has to be a lot of color in the carrot.
Frederick, thank you very much.
