UNESDA Soft Drinks Europe has announced the launch of a tailored LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) online tool for the soft drinks industry.
This LCA tool, built in collaboration with technology services company Pilario, enables soft drinks companies to measure, compare and improve the environmental performance of their products, taking into account the ingredients they source, the packaging they use and how their beverages are transported and distributed. It can also contribute to sustainability reporting, and be used to assess performance against industry standards.
The tool integrates all the key elements of the “shadow” soft drinks Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCR) that UNESDA co-developed with Mérieux NutriSciences | Blonk.
Nicholas Hodac, Director General of UNESDA, commented: “We are excited to have the first LCA tool tailored specifically for our sector, thanks to our great collaboration with Pilario and Mérieux NutriSciences | Blonk. We can now use a practical and user-friendly LCA solution to step up our environmental efforts. This tool is an important service UNESDA offers to its members to help them drive their transition toward packaging sustainability, reinforcing our sector’s ongoing commitment to reducing the environmental footprint of our packaging.”
Alycia Purcell, CEO of Pilario, stated: “Pilario is pleased to have provided the soft drinks sector with an innovative LCA tool that members can use for eco-design and sustainability reporting. Using a software reduces costs and allows scalability across sustainability operations and reporting. Our clients see considerable cost reductions for consultants, and a decrease in the time spent measuring and improving their product’s impact. We are happy to bring this innovation to the soft drinks sector and see progress in the industry toward environmentally friendly practices.”
Elisabeth Keijzer, Senior Consultant and Project Manager at Mérieux NutriSciences | Blonk, said: “Mérieux NutriSciences | Blonk is thrilled to have co-developed a “shadow” soft drinks Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCR) with the soft drinks sector. This PEFCR is essential for offering soft drinks companies a clear, harmonised methodology to assess the environmental impact of their products, ensuring that LCA results are reliable and comparable.”
With the launch of its trend prediction tool Symvision AI™, Symrise can deliver valuable and actionable insights for food and beverage manufacturers to develop successful innovations. By using AI and a unique data structure it anticipates trends for flavours, ingredients and claims. This helps identify promising market opportunities. The tool enables manufacturers to develop market-relevant food and beverage innovations by analysing multiple data sources and understanding how trends move across the globe and product categories.
In a rapidly changing world, getting ahead of consumer demands has become essential. As consumer preferences for food and beverages shift, manufacturers need to decode and anticipate market changes. This is crucial to create market-relevant food and beverage innovations that consumers love and that cater to their ever-changing wishes. Now, what kind of flavours, ingredients and claims do consumers exactly want? To answer this question, Symrise developed Symvision AI™, a trend prediction tool designed to predict the future of taste, nutrition and health.
“Consumer taste preferences change over time. Symvision AI™ allows us to anticipate these changes and predict trends for flavours, ingredients and claims. It enables us to deliver consumer-preferred taste, nutrition and health solutions for food and beverage innovations at the right time in the right place”, says Leif Jago, Global Marketing Manager Food & Beverage at Symrise.
Symvision AI™ – an AI-based multisource prediction tool
To achieve reliable and valid trend predictions, Symvision AI™ utilises a unique data structure, combining internal and external data sources, including historical data. The tool tracks reliable data at every relevant time point of a trend lifecycle. This ranges from early signals in social media to market and product launch data. Symrise continuously enriches the data sources with additional proprietary research data.
Analysing these data sources with advanced artificial intelligence algorithms enables Symvision AI™ to decode trends for flavours, ingredients and claims. It provides an understanding of how these trends move across the globe and product categories. In addition, the tool shows which consumer needs and emotional benefits specific taste tonalities address. This allows promising recommendations for specific product categories and markets.
“Several factors make our tool unique. It uses a proprietary multisource data structure that is processed by advanced AI such as machine and deep learning models. We will continuously improve and enrich our dynamic tool Symvision AI™ with more data points and more features. This will increase the benefits for our customers” adds Dr Dariah Lutsch, Research Manager, Global Sensory & Consumer Insights Food & Beverage at Symrise.
Enabling future-proof food and beverage innovations
All in all, the tool uses a unique approach to allow manufacturers to develop future-ready and consumer-preferred food and beverages with increased speed. At the same time, decoding the movement of trends across the globe and product categories enables the creation of innovations at the right time in a specific market. In addition, producers can address consumer need states as the tool connects taste tonalities with associated emotions. These benefits allow food and beverage manufacturers to innovate successfully with consumer-preferred taste, nutrition and health solutions.
“Symvision AI™ acts as a fantastic enabler for our business. It connects multiple sources of market and consumer data. It determines how this data is related over time and product categories with a focus on what consumers like and need most. Also, it provides understanding and prediction to guide new Symrise developments. Symvision AI™ provides a platform capability that will continuously grow and become stronger”, summarises Dr Conor Delahunty, VP Global Sensory & Consumer Insights at Symrise Food & Beverage.
Across much of the globe, one thing is clear: nearly everyone is actively reining in their sugar intake. What’s interesting are the various ways in which different cultures approach it. ADM Outside Voice℠ research surveyed 13,900 people in 15 countries across four regions about their purchase behaviours. On average, 83 % of consumers are limiting or avoiding sugars in their diets, but the products of particular concern vary widely.
In North America, 69 % of shoppers are flipping over pancake syrup bottles to review sugar content and ingredients on labels, while it doesn’t even make the list in the other regions. Sugar scrutiny in non-alcoholic beverages is a global priority, yet research shows that sweetening preferences shift considerably across markets. For example, North Americans prioritise milk alternatives, Europeans are focused on the quality of chocolates and pastries, and, in Latin America and Asia Pacific, snacks and specialised nutrition are top areas for product evaluation.
“It’s clear how significant monitoring sugar consumption is, no matter the region. That’s why we have invested in extensive research and analysis to understand attitudes towards sugar, motivations for reading labels, and unique ingredient preferences,” said Sarah Diedrich, Senior Marketing Director, Global Sweetening & Texturising Solutions, ADM. “We began this journey two years ago, and it has culminated in the launch of a new interactive insights tool that provides users with an in-depth look at the nuances of consumer behaviour across the globe.”
Capturing this comprehensive data is ADM’s new interactive tool, allowing food and beverage manufacturers a clear view of how people around the world are navigating their sugar reduction journeys, and the similarities and differences across nations.
ADM’s research reveals that a significant majority of the population is reducing their sugar intake, particularly in countries such as Mexico, Spain, Romania and Brazil, where around 90 % declare they actively limit or avoid sugars. The importance of low sugar content is so crucial that respondents place it on equal footing with satisfying taste across most of the globe; however, Asia Pacific is an outlier, prioritising quality and health benefits more substantially.
“Our research delivers valuable insights for product development. It serves as a roadmap for formulation strategies, highlighting the most important elements on nutrition labels and ingredient declarations that resonate with shoppers from one category to the next. Furthermore, we leverage this data when partnering with brands as they enter new global markets,” said Diedrich. “For example, we’ve observed that consumers are more forgiving on calories and sugar tallies in indulgent food categories like confections, ice creams and sweet bakery. However, there is a notable shift toward reviewing the quality of ingredients and sweetening choices in these segments. From this foundation, we can educate brands on the acceptability of ingredients in different regions, which allows them to appropriately balance great taste with label appeal.”
Within the map of the insights tool, country-specific highlights are also shared. For instance, consumers in Poland are more likely to have purchased nutrition bars and sports performance drinks, citing strong athletic and cardiovascular goals more than other European nations. Australians are more likely to seek out sugar-free products rather than offerings with partially reduced sugar, particularly when compared to three other Asia Pacific countries. For shoppers in Mexico, plant-based claims and alternative sweeteners like stevia and agave are sought-after ingredients; and Brazilians hold high regard for products with sustainable sourcing claims.
“These are just a few trends identified in the extensive statistics organised in our new interactive tool, designed to help navigate consumer desires for limiting sugars,” said Diedrich. “Supplying global and local insights is just the first step to our holistic approach to achieving successful sweetening solutions. Paired with formulation expertise and our vast portfolio of ingredients – all parts come together to address global nutrition goals.”
ADM is uniquely positioned to replicate full-sugar taste through its proprietary approach, Replace Rebalance Rebuild®. The method uses sweetening systems alongside flavours and enabling ingredients to replace sweetness, rebalance flavour and rebuild functionality. ADM is invested in research and dedicated to continually expand its ingredients pantry to solve formulation challenges and support manufacturers taking on sugar replacement efforts.
Tate & Lyle PLC, a leading global provider of food and beverage solutions and ingredients, is pleased to announce the launch of SWEETENER-VANTAGE™ Expert Systems, a set of new and innovative sweetener solution design tools, together with an education programme, which are designed to help formulators create sugar-reduced food and drink using low calorie sweeteners. Developed in response to customer demand for more predictive tools to support product performance and reduce development time, SWEETENER-VANTAGE™ Expert Systems will enable formulators to more efficiently solve their formulation challenges.
The SWEETENER-VANTAGE™ suite of tools includes sweetener maps and selection tools, and WikiSweet™, Tate & Lyle’s proprietary encyclopedia of formulation challenges and solutions, which Tate & Lyle scientists use with formulators to help them to differentiate between and select suitable sweeteners. A new three-module webinar series, Sweetener University™, developed by scientists for scientists, provides a forum for formulators to hear about and discuss the latest science and trends relating to sweeteners.
SWEETENER-VANTAGE™ builds on Tate & Lyle’s successful TEXTURE-VANTAGE® education programme, with a webinar series that has attracted thousands of registered participants since its 2018 launch.
Registration is free and accessible via this link.
Use of 1H-NMR as a screening tool to assess the quality and authenticity of fruit juices
This new 25 page review outlines how Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy coupled with multivariate statistical techniques are applied for the rapid quality and authenticity assessment of fruit juices. It explains the science behind the technique, how it can be used as a rapid screening tool, method validation, the ability to differentiate different types of juices (variety and country of origin) and determination of some components.
The document is available to IFU members and subscribers in the Methods of Analysis section of the IFU website.
