Naturex was founded in 1992 and was recently acquired by flavors and fragrance giant Givaudan. The company, which is headquartered in France, manufactures and markets natural specialty ingredients for the food and health industries.
1. What are people's top needs in the nutrition, ingredients and functional food space?
Rodrigo Setti: Our customers want to add benefits and functionality to traditional products while maintaining great taste and flavor.
Naturex is working to satisfy consumers who are seeking out more natural, clean and simple labeling and are looking for opportunities to replace traditional medicines and improve their lifestyle.
2. What are the top trends you're seeing in the nutritional, ingredients and functional food markets today driving demands?
RS: “Better for you!” has become a top trend. There are currently a lot of products with “MORE PROTEIN” — products that communicate about added protein — on the market in Latin America.
We are experiencing a new era with an increasing number of new products containing botanical extracts, particularly in beverages, as well as meat analogs on the market.
Natural ingredients have become a key expectation for consumers who are looking for a healthy diet and want to replace synthetic ingredients.
Ultimately, consumers are looking for traditional products to support their health, which includes vitamins, minerals and benefits for a better life.
3. How is Naturex responding?
RS: Naturex offers solutions for the food and beverage market to respond to demands for clean, attractive and visually-appealing products. The ingredients provide flavor, shelf life, stability and naturalness in a wide range of applications, including confectionery and gummies, beverages, meat products, bakery and cereals, snacks and dairy products.
Naturex’s portfolio offers solutions to fulfill the needs of the new generation of healthy food and beverages. In conjunction with Givaudan’s expertise in formulating concepts to maintain the best sensorial experiences, we are able to support our customers and speed up the development process.
4. Where do you think the nutritional, ingredient and functional food segments in Latin America are heading? What are the key opportunities and challenges?
RS: The LATAM market is going through a big change. In the near future, most food and beverage products will offer some benefits in their formulation.
People will increasingly replace traditional medicines for these kinds of food and beverages, such as bread with oats, a soft drink with botanical extracts to support urinary tract infections (UTI), gummies with vitamins and minerals, as well as improved options in terms of taste and flavor to replace meat and milk, etc.
There is a real opportunity to create new products for this growing market. Naturex recently launched TurmiPure Gold, a new generation of turmeric to the market, designed to be applied in beverages. Lower doses and excellent solubility offer a perfect solution for the dairy and beverage market.
Naturex and Givaudan will maintain efforts to offer new ingredients to collaborate with this wave of changes. The challenge is to adjust the current regulations in LATAM countries to be more open to new technologies and allow more ingredients and claims on the label. This a difficult task, but not an impossible one. The new legislation in Brazil for supplements and changes in Cofepris are good examples of evolving legislation.
5. What are Naturex's plans for 2020 and beyond?
RS: Thanks to Naturex’s integration with Givaudan, as we move into 2020, we are now better able to leverage the strengths of both companies to create integrated solutions that combine both flavor and function. By doing so, we can provide a one-stop solution for many of our customers that simplifies product development and allows them to speed up their time to market.
Investing in research and development and conducting research to fully assess the benefits of our current and future ingredients will also remain a core part of our health and wellness activity in the coming years in order to respond to increasing consumer demand for effective and natural ingredients.
