Frutarom pushes concept of functional ice cream
ice cream market with a range of ingredients such as aloe vera to
"support inner beauty" and "relieve stress," writes
Anthony Fletcher.
Frutarom, which has its US headquarters in New Jersey, says that its new range "combines natural fruits, natural flavor extracts and natural functional ingredients that enhance and support well-being."
The all-in-one product range offers ice cream manufacturers a unique pre-integrated solution that combines natural fruits, natural flavor extracts and natural functional ingredients designed to enhance and support well-being.
The company clearly believes that it is on to a good thing here. Functional food is the fastest growing segment in the food industry and the functional ingredient segment is currently growing at an annual rate of 8 to 10 percent.
What's more, ten percent of US participants in a recent HealthFocus survey said that they always base their grocery decisions on health concerns, while 59 percent sometimes do, 25 percent sometimes do and 6 percent rarely or never do.
There is also enormous potential for growth within this sector. Total US production of ice cream and related frozen desserts in 2003 amounted to about 1.6 billion gallons, up about 1.3 percent over the previous year prior, translating to about 22 quarts per person, according to the USDA.
And while reduced-fat, light, low-fat and non-fat ice cream accounts for around 24 percent of consumption at present, this is set to grow.
Ice cream manufacturers are now beginning to pay attention to this trend. Unilever for example announced this month that it was using double churned technology to create a new generation of premium light ice cream, which, it claims, "delivers all of the creamy taste of regular ice cream with half the fat".
Meanwhile, Haagen-Dazs announced that it plans to introduce its light version of its products - containing 50 percent less fat -than the regular range.
Although ice cream manufacturers have been markedly slower to including herbal extracts in their products, something that the beverage and dairy industries have already taking full advantage of, Frutarom is confident that the general trend towards health food will mean that functional ice cream will be big this summer, and that the firm is well-positioned to take advantage.
Certainly, the company has been considerably strengthened through the recent acquisition of International Flavours & Fragrances fruit preparation operations in Europe. The €819.9 million European and US fruit and vegetable extracts and powders market is on course to grow 4.5 per cent annually, reaching €1.07 billion by 2009.
"Frutarom's unique capabilities for providing integrative products have been strengthened by the acquisition of IFF's European Food Systems and allow us tooffer our customers in the food industry unique, innovative, added-value pre-integrated products that combine natural flavors and natural functional ingredients with food systems," said the firm's president Ori Yehudai.
Frutarom is a global company that supplies the food, beverage, flavor, fragrance and pharmaceutical industries. The company achievedrecord results in 2004 in its fifth consecutive year of growth: in 2004 sales grew 41.2 percent to $196.8 million with net profit increasing significantly by 91.6 percent to $15.8 million.
