Clean label

One of our clients, an industrial player in the agri-food sector, wanted to assess and develop its clean label strategy. To do this, we have supported it by benchmarking the strategies and actions of its competitors.

First, we defined the contours of the clean label, in order to establish a common definition that can serve as a framework. Then, we studied the actions of companies from various sectors: drinks, snacking, dairy products, infant nutrition etc. and carried out this benchmark on several geographies (Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, Africa), in order to understand what the regional specific features could be.

We were thus able to establish recommendations for our client on product strategies (which have an impact on formulations) and communication strategies towards the public and the stakeholders of the value chain.

Our client, an ingredient supplier, wanted to assess the opportunity of an offer of natural preservatives.

To do this, we carried out an investigation with agri-food industrial players, users of ingredients, on the segments of dairy products, meat, ready meals, fruits and vegetables, infant nutrition, drinks, condiments, bakery products and animal feed. We were thus able to identify the current practices, the innovation strategies towards clean label products and their main difficulties, as well as the receptivity to the “natural preservatives” offer from our client.

In the end, we were able to guide our client in developing a go-to-market strategy for its natural food preservatives in order to become a key player in the clean label.

As part of its clean label strategy, our client wanted to reformulate some of its food products and wanted to use natural extracts for its new recipes.

We thus helped him identify the natural extracts of interest by first carrying out an overview of ingredients having in particular antimicrobial and antifungal properties. Then, we characterized the identified natural extracts to isolate the most promising solutions.

On this basis, we finally built recommendations for our client’s future food products, including the establishment of partnerships with suppliers of natural extracts of interest.

Given the “clean label” trend, one of our clients in the agri-food sector was faced with a growing demand for natural food ingredients from its consumers and called on our team to better understand the alternative solutions to synthetic emulsifiers and to identify potential partners.

As part of a three-step scouting approach, our team first defined the scope of the project with our client and the predefined key evaluation criteria, before mapping and characterizing alternative solutions to natural emulsifiers and associated partners.

Finally, we recommended to our client two potential solutions to consider in response to the “clean label” trend and prioritized the partner stakeholders to focus on.

An international leader in the segment of enzymes for the agrifood sector asked our team to help develop its clean label products offering for “plant substitutes to meat” type applications (vegetable steaks, vegetable nuggets, etc.) and “plant-based milks” (soy milk, almond milk, etc.).

The first step of our project consisted in carrying out a field investigation aimed at understanding the needs and expectations of B2C players toward ingredient manufacturers for the years to come, thus allowing us to categorize avenues for new offers for our client into main themes: improve the nutritional profile, improve flavor & texture, and optimize production costs. We then transposed these needs into specifications for our client’s R&D team to plan the development of enzymatic solutions tailored adapted to changing consumer demands.

Our team finally translated these specifications into a list of R&D projects, prioritized according to the capabilities and challenges of our client.