Florian Biehle, Category Leader for Bakery, Snacks & Confectionery, EMEA, Ingredion

What are your expectations for 2023, keeping in mind the legacy of 2022, but also the current challenges?

Our expectation is that value for cost will be an important driver of consumers’ purchase behaviour in 2023. While consumers want affordability, they are not willing to compromise on some factors, such as clean label, nutrition and product taste and texture. According to consumer research conducted this year by FMCG Gurus, three quarters of global consumers claim that it is important that their groceries are 100% natural.

We will continue to develop innovation services and more efficient processes and ingredients to support our customers on delivering solutions that will resonate with consumers. Supply chain and energy cost issues will remain our customers’ key challenges. We will strive to address these via EMEA capacity expansion and exploring innovation in more energy efficient processes and ingredients.

How do you estimate the market will evolve and what is your priority list for 2023?

Our expectation is that our customers will seek to reduce long-term delivered cost while taking into account the environmental footprint. In response to this, Ingredion has invested in capacity expansion, for instance, 20% more clean label capacity has been added to our network.

We are also investing in innovative technologies that enable reformulation to locally sourced ingredients that are interchangeable versus imported ones.

Where did the growth opportunities come from and what is the most important lesson you have learned in recent times?

An important lesson we have learned is that rather than only providing high-quality and healthy ingredients, we also need to guide our customers in applying them in products. Offering an end-to-end solution has proven to be particularly important in our relationships with food and drink manufacturers, who rely on us for our technical expertise and industry knowledge. Having added a food systems solution to our business in 2021, we have greatly enhanced our operations; this newly added function has steadily overdelivered since its introduction.

Furthermore, consumers are seeking out products that are natural, with short ingredients lists, free from additives. As a response, we offered a range of solutions that enable our customers to make clean label claims on their food and drink products, including clean label texturisers and starches, as well as sweetener solutions of natural origin. The latter includes steviol glycoside sweeteners and allulose. Our steviol glycoside sweetener, PureCircle Reb M, is produced via a bioconversion method that mimics the plant’s natural production process and saves on costs.

What was unexpected in 2022 and how did it impact your business?

The most challenging developments in 2022 were the energy crisis in Europe, consequent inflationary environment, supply chain disruptions and labour shortages. A proprietary Voice of Customer work we did in 2022 clearly illustrated the impact that these factors are having on the industry. This work informed some of the strategies that we as a supplier adopted to support our customer’s future growth. As a result, our focus was and will continue to be on capacity expansion, localisation, geographic and raw material diversification — in 2022 we invested in capacity expansion, with 20% more clean label capacity being added to our network.