Key Business Outlooks For 2026: Dieneke van Houwelingen, Business Development Manager, EMEA – Corbion
Over the next five years, the bakery industry will increasingly adopt integrated systems that address dough quality, spoilage control, and food safety together. Ready-to-eat bakery will remain a key growth segment, but success will depend on the ability to manage microbial risk and shelf life consistently across complex supply chains.
We asked the most important players in the European and American baking industry about their expectations for the year ahead. They talked about opportunities, changing consumer expectations, what type of support the industry needs, but also about the drawbacks of an unstable political climate and the challenges that come with labour shortage and energy prices increasing.
Dieneke van Houwelingen, Business Development Manager, EMEA – Corbion
How do you foresee the global and regional bakery markets evolving, and what are your company’s top priorities for 2026?
The bakery market remains resilient, but it is becoming more complex. While bread, buns, and sweet bakery products remain everyday staples, growth is increasingly driven by convenience-oriented formats such as ready-to-eat bakery, including chilled sandwiches, filled rolls, and desserts. These products meet consumer demand for convenience, but they also place significantly higher demands on shelf life, food safety, and consistency across extended and often unpredictable distribution chains.
In Europe, bakers are navigating cost pressure, labor constraints, and growing expectations around recognizable ingredients and sustainability. At the same time, regulatory requirements are becoming more stringent, particularly for ready-to-eat products. For Corbion, priorities for 2026 center on preservation, supporting manufacturers in managing mold, spoilage, and food safety risks across shelf life, while helping them prepare for evolving food safety requirements.
What have been your primary growth drivers over the past year, and what is the most significant lesson you’ve learned?
One of the strongest growth drivers has been the industry’s increased focus on shelf-life management as a business-critical function. For both conventional and ready-to-eat bakery products, shelf life now directly influences logistics flexibility, food waste, and regulatory compliance. Manufacturers are increasingly reassessing existing formulations and processes to ensure products remain safe and high-quality throughout their intended life.
The most important lesson has been that preservation challenges cannot be solved in isolation. Mold growth, pathogen control, and product quality are influenced by a combination of formulation, hygiene, processing conditions, packaging, and post-production temperature exposure. Effective solutions require a system-level approach that takes all these factors into account.
As competition intensifies, how are you strengthening your market position while balancing innovation and operational investment?
As competition increases, bakery manufacturers are prioritizing reliability and predictability. Differentiation increasingly comes from consistent performance under real-world conditions rather than incremental product changes. Our strategy focuses on preservation solutions rooted in natural processes and plant sources that deliver reliable mold inhibition and pathogen control across shelf life.
Balancing innovation with operational efficiency means focusing on solutions that simplify production rather than complicate it. Predictive modeling and validation tools help reduce testing timelines, limit unnecessary reformulation cycles, and lower overall cost in use, while supporting robust mold inhibition and food safety strategies. This ensures that innovation delivers measurable value on the production floor.
What unexpected developments occurred in 2025, and how did they influence your strategy?
One unexpected development was the continued unpredictability of spoilage behavior, particularly mold growth under varying environmental conditions. Changes in climate, temperature fluctuations during transport, and variability between production sites all contributed to inconsistent performance, even in established product ranges.
This highlighted the limitations of relying solely on traditional preservation strategies. Manufacturers increasingly recognized the need for solutions that perform across a broader range of conditions, as well as tools that help anticipate risk rather than react to failures. As a result, interest grew in fermentation-based preservation systems and predictive approaches to mold inhibition and shelf-life validation.
What are the most significant forces driving change in 2026, and how is your company preparing?
A major driver of change for 2026 is the new EU requirement coming into effect on 1 July, which requires ready-to-eat products with a shelf life longer than five days to demonstrate that Listeria monocytogenes does not grow beyond 100 cfu/g throughout shelf life. For many manufacturers, this represents a shift from assumption-based shelf life toward evidence-based validation. This requirement may also affect certain bakery products, particularly those with fillings or components that fall under ready-to-eat classifications.
Preparing for this change requires more than adjusting formulations. Manufacturers need to understand how product composition, processing, packaging, and distribution interact to influence microbial growth. Corbion supports this transition by combining natural antimicrobial solutions with scientific modeling tools that assess pathogen growth potential under specific, real-world conditions. This enables manufacturers to design safer products and validate shelf life with greater confidence.
What policy, regulatory, or market shifts would most benefit the baking sector in 2026?
Greater alignment between food safety objectives and sustainability goals would strongly benefit the baking sector. Shelf life, when responsibly managed, supports safer products, more efficient logistics, and reduced food waste. Regulatory frameworks that encourage validation, risk-based decision-making, and outcome-focused approaches would help manufacturers innovate while maintaining high safety standards.
Clear guidance on how to demonstrate compliance for ready-to-eat products would also support smoother adoption of new preservation strategies, particularly as manufacturers prepare for the July 2026 requirements.
Looking ahead to the next five years, what is your vision for the industry and Corbion’s role?
Over the next five years, the bakery industry will increasingly adopt integrated systems that address dough quality, spoilage control, and food safety together. Ready-to-eat bakery will remain a key growth segment, but success will depend on the ability to manage microbial risk and shelf life consistently across complex supply chains.
Corbion’s role is to support bakers in moving from reactive problem-solving to proactive system design. By combining a broad portfolio of natural fermentation-based and plant-derived ingredient solutions with predictive tools for both pathogen growth and mold inhibition, we aim to help manufacturers deliver safe, high-quality bakery products while reducing waste and meeting evolving regulatory expectations.