On a mission to drive innovation by supplying manufacturers with on-trends concepts and ingredients that resonate with consumers’ expectations, French dairy ingredients expert, Epi Ingredients, worked on several innovative solutions sure to create quite a buzz at Food ingredients Europebeing held here from Dec 3-5, 2019.
“With fermented foods as one of 2019’s top trends, we focussed a lot of our efforts this year on expanding our offerings of fermented ingredients. However, we know that nutrition and healthy options are also an essential aspect of consumers’ purchasing decisions; which is why we worked hard on developing a new nutrition-oriented concept specifically designed as a satisfying tasty alternative that also addresses the nutritional aspect,“ explains Mathieu Lucot, marketing manager, Epi Ingredients. “These are so innovative and unique in the world of ingredients that we are really excited to see the response we get from the industry at the show,” he adds.
According to a press release issued by the company, after successfully launching new product concepts SoFlexi and SoBenefik these past two years, it is doing it again this year; this time with a revolutionary extruded crispy ingredient and third concept of the range SoUnik. This patented ingredient, known as SoCrispies, was co-developed with a company specialised in the extrusion process. SoCrispies comes in two varieties and makes the perfect crunchy inclusion or topping for an array of finished products:
- the first variety contains 100% dairy proteins and was created as a new tasty and nutritious way to incorporate protein into applications such as chocolate bars, nutrition bars or frozen desserts and ice cream.
- the other variety features the company’s flagship yogurt powder and was designed as a yogurt-flavoured add-
in, bringing crunchiness and a distinctive yogurt-flavour to a wide range of food applications.
For attendees to fully experience the tremendous potential held by these dairy-based protein crisps, the company will be offering samples of their protein crisps in chocolate, bars, and ice cream; all high in protein thanks to these revolutionary inclusions. Their indulgent yogurt-crisps will also be available to sample on the booth in chocolate, candy bars, and as a topping on frozen yogurt.
The company has been working on expanding its offerings in fermented ingredients, and, beyond the yogurt crisps, Fi Europe will also be the occasion for the company to unveil their ‘ethnic’ fermented powders, newest addition to their range. Building upon its longstanding technological expertise, the company was able to create new flavour profiles by playing with different cultures and fine-tuning their process. Some of the new ingredients developed include a Skyr powder, a Kefir powder, and, to stay true to the company’s roots anchored in Brittany, a ‘lait Ribot’ powder.
All of these new fermentation-based additions, whether it be the yogurt crisps or the ethnic fermented powders also take on a new dimension in light of the recent Kosher certification of their production site this past summer by Orthodox Union Kosher certification service; allowing the company to now supply their customers with fermented powders that are both Kosher and Halal certified, and thus opening up new markets for the company.
