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Editor’s Stuff: Look to the entrepreneurs!
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THE Hartman Group, a foremost food industry consultancy in the US, frequently comes up with great insights on how trends are playing out, and here’s another gem from them this week.
They argue that while the packaged foods industry’s sales are flagging, and its business leaders seem to think the economy and the need for better marketing are to blame, it’s actually more about something else: the food.
Legacy brands, they contend, need to take a page from upmarket, entrepreneurial food businesses and start shaping their products to consumers’ needs, which are radically different from when many of these old brands were growing fast.
The Hartman Group’s free paper, A Recipe for Growth in Packaged Foods, outlines the issue and gives practical advice on how to start making the shift toward success in today’s changing food and beverage marketplace. Click the link below….
Great food industry jobs on offer! FOODStuff SA is a hub for
food-bev industry recruitment! Click here
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| Local News and Developments |
Taste Holding’s makes big moves in pizza and chicken Taste Holdings has signed a 30-year master licence agreement to develop the international Domino’s Pizza brand in Southern Africa, considered the world’s leading pizza delivery brand in both store numbers and unit sales. This news comes after Taste’s announcement last month of the R17m acquisition of Zebro’s Chicken.
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Apple at the eye of Distell Both the wine and brandy markets have been very tough in recent years, which then beg the question of how Stellenbosch-based liquor conglomerate, Distell, has managed find such consistent profits?
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SA sugar producers laud duty Consumers are in for more food-beverage price hikes, this time in sugar-based products, after the recommendation by the International Trade Administration Commission of SA (Itac) that the domestic dollar-based reference price for sugar be increased.
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Ending hunger in South Africa: We have to do better We often hear that South Africa is food secure at a national level but that at an individual level, there is widespread hunger. If more than half of our population lives with the uncertainty and pain of hunger in a country with sufficient food and with a constitutionally entrenched justiciable right of access to sufficient food, what is going wrong?
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Marking the end of a 35-year tenure at the world’s second-largest brewer, SABMiller, Norman Adami will stand down as chairman of the group’s SA operations when he retires in July, the company has announced. He will be succeeded by the MD of the group’s SA beer division, Mauricio Leyva.
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Food and beverage buyers from Africa target Africa’s Big Seven Expo For more than a decade, Africa’s Big Seven (AB7,) a food and beverage trade show in Africa, has provided a networking platform and product showcase for producers, manufacturers and suppliers to penetrate lucrative African markets. AB7 2014 takes place from 22 – 24 June at the Gallagher Convention Centre, Johannesburg.
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In case you missed it: Clover seeks success in innovation, inflation and acquisition?
Despite challenging times for all food producers and retailers, the dairy sector is doing fairly well, and heading the sector is Clover Industries. Its momentum is being driven by a multitude of strategies.
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International Developments
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Food activists are transforming the relationship people have with what they eat. For processed foods, ingredient performance and sourcing are under the microscope. Yet most food companies are loath to give these activists the time of day, accusing most anyone who questions their practices as at best uninformed and, at worst, stupid.
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Mars and Procter & Gamble have announced that Mars has agreed to buy the IAMS, EUKANUBA, and NATURA brands in major markets for $2.9-bn in cash. This is a significant strategic move for Mars Petcare to complement its large and growing global pet care business.
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Unilever has announced that all of its European factories have achieved zero non-hazardous waste to landfill status, meaning that more than three quarters of the company’s global factory network no longer sends such waste to landfill.
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| Trends, Marketing and NPD |
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Going places: Breakfast on the go
Millions of people worldwise miss breakfast, to their health and performance detriment. Here’s a look at some innovative new brands in the UK tapping into the emerging breakfast market for healthy, on-the-go alternatives that require little to no prepartion, while being packed with goodness in exciting and imaginative flavours. |
US: Core Power shakes up protein drink category
Mike McCloskey, a veterinarian-turned-farmer-turned-entrepreneur, is revolutionising the dairy industry. Using a patented membrane-filtration process, he is the brains behind Core Power, a silky-smooth high-protein milk – little fat, no lactose, cane sugar and natural honey – that has seen Coca-Cola buy an equity stake and it designated as the official protein drink of the 2014 Olympic Winter Games. His company, fairlife, has been named as one of the most innovative food companies by Fast Company. |
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A growing appetite for cold pressing Cold-pressed products are becoming more available. The process has been around for a while, for example in making oilive oil, juices, gaucamole and smoothies. Now there’s a new addition tot he market, the cold-pressed food bar.
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Another way that sugary cereals ‘hook’ children?
The next time you stroll down the cereal aisle at a grocery store, blindfold your children. Because the characters on kids cereal boxes are literally staring at them… |
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A look at Lurpak’s advertising reveals that this Danish brand has a thing for making food look out of this world. From super slow-motion to creative close-ups, its ads are the avant-garde of gastro-advertising. Check out it’s latest one…
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US: Hormel’s new take-along ambient breakfasts
An ultimate convenience breakfast? After five years of research, Hormel Foods in the US has launched a new line of ambient microwavable breakfast meals made with real eggs. |
| See all 2014 trends reports here! |
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| Food Science, Technology and Ingredients |
How should the industry tackle sugar reduction?
Obesity remains a big problem, and that—like it or not—the sugar industry is assuming a lot of the blame. How should the industry tackle sugar reduction? Naturally, artificially, or perhaps through more esoteric means? |
Simplicity, not science, rules sweetener coverage
The average consumer’s desire for simplicity and the average journalist’s desire for a good headline is driving public perception of sweeteners, according to participants of a debate in Brussels. |
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Pea protein may be moving in from the food and beverage fringes, however formulating with the fast-growing ingredient is ‘no picnic’ according to functional confectionery firm, Carmit.
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Concrete gumgle: Wrigley develops easy-to-remove chewing gum Wrigley has filed a patent for a chewing gum base using block polymers that is less adhesive to concrete surfaces. Chewing gum bases typically consist of linear, amorphous polymers, which can easily become trapped in crevices on pavements and cost a great a deal of public money to remove.
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| Health and Nutrition |
Five-a-day is not enough: health experts
British health experts say the current ‘5-a-day’ fruit and vegetable guidelines are not good enough and should be raised to ‘7’ or even ’10-a-day’. The recommendations follow research which found that eating large quantities of fruit and vegetables dramatically lowers the risk of death. |
Beware the sugar in ‘healthier’ beverages
Fruit juices and smoothies contain ‘horrifying’ sugar levels Some fruit juices and smoothies contain four times the amount of sugar the WHO recommends an average person should consume in a day, a new survey shows. |
Is full-fat milk best? The skinny on the dairy paradox
Consuming full-fat dairy products seems to reduce the risk of becoming obese. This “dairy fat paradox” is the suggestion that if by optin for low-fat versions of dairy products people are more likely to become obese than those who eat full-fat versions. |
Butter is good for you again even though it’s never actually been bad
Nutritional science has certainly made many important advances, but it has also served to complicate nutrition in the minds of the ordinary food eater… And after thirty years of what now seems like counterintuitive nutritional advice, we are finally reclaiming the nutritional advice of a pre-industrial culinary history that was based on the simple concept of eating things that were more or less a direct by-product of nature. The moral of the story is you can finally have your butter, eat it, and feel good about it, too. |
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COMMENT: ADHD does not exist Over the course of my career, I have found more than 20 conditions that can lead to symptoms of ADHD, each of which requires its own approach to treatment. Raising a generation of children — and now adults — who can’t live without stimulants is no solution.
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Homeopathy is no better than a placebo, says new Australian study
Homeopathic medicines are as effective as placebos at treating illnesses, an Australian scientific body has claimed in a new study. |
The precise reason for the health benefits of dark chocolate
The health benefits of eating dark chocolate have been extolled for centuries, but the exact reason has remained a mystery — until now. American researchers report that certain bacteria in the stomach gobble the chocolate and ferment it into anti-inflammatory compounds that are good for the heart. |
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| Weird, Whacky and Wonderful Stuff |
The Lightie: A small light with big ambitions
South African designer and social entrepreneur, Michael Suttner has already won several high-profile accolates for his invention, the Lightie: a portable solar-powered light that fits into a standard soda bottle. The low cost and durable device is designed to provide sustainable, safe, and affordable lighting to people in developing nations. |
The old and mysterious practice of eating ‘white dirt’ revealed
“White dirt”, the soft, chalky clay or kaolin that’s widely used to make porcelain, paper and paint, is an object of biazrre craving in the Southern USA, and in many other parts of the world. What’s going on her? |
Why does airline food taste so bad? Turns out it’s your fault
It’s a question every traveller has asked: Why does airplane food taste so bad? No matter what it is, every meal served in the air seems to taste undeniably worse than its on-the-ground counterpart. However, it not the food that’s really the problem here. |
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Health bites…2014: They said it this week!
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 “THE clear message…is that the more fruit and vegetables you eat, the less likely you are to die at any age. My advice would be, however much you are eating now, eat more.”
Dr Oyinlola Oyebode, University College London
“ALMOST every single nutrient imaginable has peer-reviewed publications associating it with almost any outcome.”
John Ioannidis, professor of medicine, Stanford
“WE shall continue to be bombarded with conflicting claims made by people who are doing their best with flawed methods, as well as by those trying to sell fad diets. Don’t believe them.
“The famous “5-a-day” advice that we are constantly bombarded with does no harm, but it has no sound basis. As far as I can guess, the only sound advice about healthy eating for most people is
- don’t eat too much
- don’t eat all the same thing
“You can’t make much money out of that advice. No doubt that is why you don’t hear it very often.”
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