Sweetening mints with sugar-free ingredients and additional health benefits
05 Jul 2023 | Powermints
Jannis Theileis, managing director at Powermints, introduces the company’s vegan, sugar-free mints which are sweetened with sucralose and xylitol. Theileis explains that xylitol helps prevent tooth decay, by neutralizing the pH-level in a person’s mouth after eating or drinking coffee, which usually increases acidity levels. The company also reduced its plastic packaging materials and aims to become plastic-free shortly in an effort to increase its products’ sustainability.
This is Yolanda van Gaal reporting for CNN Media.
I'm here at ISM Cologne, together with Jones from Power and Winds, who is the general manager of the company.
Welcome.
Thank you for, for joining us.
Which products are you showcasing at this trade show?
We are showing here our sugar-free mints.
We are a manufacturer in Germany for mints that are made with natural ingredients and mainly it's the mint factor which we have in 3 different brands.
And can you tell me a bit more because I see they're sugar free and there's lots of beneficial ingredients.
Can you tell me a bit more about the ingredients you use?
So basically, all of our products, they have no artificial flavors or artificial colors.
It's all used with natural flavors there.
When it comes to the sweeteners, we were able to be the first producer who eliminated aspartame as a chemical sweetener and even assaulfem.
And we use succralose and we use Xylitol to sweeten our mints and which have a great additional benefit like Xylitol helps to prevent tooth decay or it's an adding benefit from it.
Xylitol helps to have a neutral pH level in your mouth, so when consumers eat our product, their pH level is neutralized.
So after eating, after drinking coffee, even after smoking, you have a very acidity, high acidity level in the mouth that is being neutralized and that helps again to prevent the teeth are attacked by the acids in the mouth.
Perfect.
And what flavors are you working on?
How do you come up with the flavors you use?
It's a bit mainstream also that we use flavors that really work like the Lemon, we have a berry flavor, but of course when it comes to a mint, the classic peppermint or a mentho, these are still the best flavors, but we have a variety of 10 to 12 different flavors which we can offer under our brand.
We also do a lot of private label where we can even use other flavors.
The client is telling us what to do.
Like we have mints that have an energy aspect we use.
Vitamins in our natural vitamins, vitamin B, C, D, we can use that in our mints, but for our own brand we use the standard flavors like lemon, peppermint, and berries.
And what kind of trends do you see in the market that the products you offer really respond to?
We see that the consumers now are looking much more on the back label.
They are much more interested in what is inside the product.
More than looking just at which brand is it.
Before it was just about a brand.
Is it hip?
Is it cool?
But now the ingredients really matter and we see also sustainability is a huge issue, getting plastic free, and that's something we are also working on.
We have already eliminated 70% of our plastic huge within the last two years.
So sustainability, good ingredients.
Last year we could we could bring out our mince as vegan mince because also that is a big trend.
So it's all about being health conscious and looking what's inside the product, and that's what we're proud of because we have a good product inside.
And what are some of the key ingredients you work with?
The key ingredient is sorbet.
Almost 90% of the product is sorbet, which we use derived from corn or maize, so it's processed there.
But then when it comes to the flavoring, we use only 100% natural essential oils, so the pure peppermint oil that is derived from the plant.
The pure lemon oil.
So when it comes to essential oils that we use, we are very careful which ingredients we use.
But then when it comes to the fruit flavors like berry or peach, we have dehydrated the fruits or we buy dehydrated fruit which we then.
Put into the tablet and that creates the flavor, the color, but it's from the real natural fruit.
And can you maybe tell me a bit more about the sourcing aspects of it?
So how does that work for your company?
We try to source almost 90% of our raw ingredients are sourced from Germany.
Obviously there are some ingredients that are not manufactured in Germany, but we make sure that they have the IFS certification on the higher level.
We ourselves are IFS certified on higher level, which is very important to our direct clients, so the retailers, they, they demand that from us that we have the IFS higher standard and so most of our raw ingredients we source from Europe.
Mainly from Germany but also Italy and neighboring countries.
And what's next for the company?
Maybe like the next few years?
What do you what do you hope for?
Most important for us is to continue improving the product when it comes to having a clean product.
So trying to be absolutely plastic free.
We have still plastic as a dispenser inside, a little inlet so that not all the tablets fall out instantly when you open the tin.
And that is still used of plastic, but by the end of the year this will be made out of a plastic that is derived from algaes and that will be 100% recyclable and actually even it goes a step further, and so that is something we are looking into reducing our complete plastic usage and becoming more sustainable.
And then when it comes to the product itself, we are looking into new innovations when it comes to the size of the tablet, the format of the tablet, but also the ingredients, having more beneficial beneficial ingredients, , that have a direct bearing on your on health conscious people.
