Nestlé Dreyer’s Ice Cream has announced key ingredient improvements to six brands including Edy’s, Häagen-Dazs, Outshine, Skinny Cow, Nestlé Ice Cream, and Nestlé Drumstick. This is the latest step in a multi-year effort to update existing products across the entire portfolio of brands. With a focus on simplifying ingredient lists while maintaining the same taste, the newest changes vary across more than 100 products, with examples including the removal of artificial colors and flavors, high fructose corn syrup, and GMO ingredients. The newly formulated products began rolling out in the United States last month.
For example, the company announced nine of its most popular Edy’s Slow Churned flavors will now be branded Slow Churned Simple Recipes, to reflect their simpler ingredient profile. The improved recipes feature a label with seven or eight ingredients, reduced from an average of 22. Additional changes include the removal of all artificial colors and flavors, high fructose corn syrup, and GMO ingredients along with the addition of fresh milk from cows not treated with rBST. Nestlé plans to update the remaining Slow Churned flavors by the end of 2017 and will continue to update other products across all brands in its portfolio.
“Nestlé Dreyer’s Ice Cream understands that consumers want to know what’s in their food, where those ingredients come from, and how the food products they purchase are made,” said Robert Kilmer, president, Nestlé Dreyer’s Ice Cream. “We are the industry leader when it comes to innovation and, as consumer demand centers on transparency and choice, we are responding with new ways to make ice cream even better. Using simpler ingredients that our consumers can recognize, and removing those that don’t belong, is a natural next step for our brands.”
In other news, Nestlé South Africa has officially opened its expanded instant coffee manufacturing plant in Estcourt after a R1.2 billion (approximately $83 million) investment into the expansion of the factory. The investment into the expansion of the factory forms part of the company’s R2.9 billion (approximately $203 million) foreign direct investment in the last five years. The expansion includes the construction of a waste water treatment plant, a new coffee processing plant, upgrading the existing coffee processing, and a coffee drying plant.
