Cargill’s Key Trends for 2017 in Cocoa and Chocolate

Cargill’s cocoa and chocolate business recently released its report highlighting key sector trends for helping manufacturers develop their upcoming innovations.

Based on insight gained from interactions with customers across numerous application categories and from information gathered from projects conducted with customers through Cargill’s application centers, the report highlights trends across four key themes: Indulgent, premium, healthy and sustainable and clean.

1. Indulgent – today’s consumer is looking for an ever-more indulgent experience in terms of flavor, texture and color, inspiring new levels of creativity in sweet foods around the world. In flavors, vegetable and chocolate combinations are becoming popular across a range of categories, for example, kale flavor fillings in chocolate bars and chocolate featured alongside beetroot in cakes.
2. Premium – demand for premium products is at an all-time high, with provenance and origin serving as key factors among cocoa and chocolate products. In addition to specifying the origin of cocoa or chocolate, manufacturers increasingly highlight on packaging the country in which the end-product was manufactured, satisfying consumers’ desire for buying local products. Inspiration from the artisanal industry is also being observed. The processes involved in creating the product are becoming more prominent on packaging, with details included such as ‘stone ground’ or ‘slow churned’ and even chocolate conching times.
3. Healthy – how diet affects health and wellness is increasingly on consumers’ minds, leading them to avoid ingredients perceived as unhealthy and instead seeking out those that are viewed as being healthy. In addition to the long standing trend for sugar reduction and gluten free products, lactose-free claims are increasingly being observed in cocoa and chocolate products, with milk alternatives such as coconut milk increasing in popularity. Looking at ingredients that are viewed as beneficial, the trend for protein is still on the rise and becoming mainstream, breaking free from its sports nutrition niche and focusing on satiety rather than sports recovery.
4. Sustainable and clean – where food comes from, how it is produced and its true ethical and environmental costs are of particular importance to today’s consumer. Certified chocolate products are becoming more popular and extending their reach from chocolate bars to dairy, bakery, biscuits and ice cream products. Responding to consumers’ needs for more transparency, clean and clear labeling is also more important than ever. Real fruit and plant extracts are increasingly being used to naturally color products.

Niklas Andersson, marketing director of Cocoa and Chocolate Europe explains: “Today’s discerning consumer is looking beyond value for money. They are better informed than ever before and, as our research demonstrates, they consider the contents of their food and its impacts on the future more than ever before. In short, they want food that tastes good, is good, helps them to be good and does good.”