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Editor’s Stuff: Innova’s predictions on trends for 2012!
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I KNOW THE WELCOME year-end season is approaching when “Trends for 2012” articles start appearing, and the first hit my inbox this week. It’s from the highly-respected and media-savvy Innova Market Insights, and was backed up with a global webinar that I watched.
Innova Market Insights has identified 10 key trends to impact the food and beverage market through 2012 and beyond. The top trends relate to purity, authenticity, and sustainability, as consumers continue to look for products with added value, despite the ongoing economic uncertainty.
FOODStuff SA is three year’s old! Late November in 2008, I launched an infant website and newsletter and I’m delighted to report that today it is a healthy, growing child, and one that absorbs more and more of its parent’s time. From small beginnings, FOODStuff SA now has over 3 000 subscribers to the newsletter; it attracts well over 5 000 unique visitors every month, and to date this year, over two million pages have been read.
To all my readers and advertisers, thank you again for your valued interest and support!
Tired of your job? Want to start 2012 afresh? There are several interesting job opportunities posted up on FOODStuff SA’s Jobs pages: IT specialists, food safety auditors, key accounts, technical sales, and processing managers… Click here!
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| Local Food Industry News |
Consumer goods group Tiger Brands said this week it expected consumer spending to remain tight in the next financial year on the back of limited disposable incomes due to rising inflation and higher unemployment.
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The overall demand for cultured dairy products continues to increase and the yoghurt market plays an integral part within this. The category has seen consistent growth since BMI tracking started in 1998, reaching up to 18% in 2005, and in double digits for the 2003-2007 period. While the overall annual growth rate has slowed down significantly in the last five years, it’s still on a healthy upwards trajectory.
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An article on UCT’s Prof Jill Farrant notes that in 40 years time, as people sit down to a bowl of cornflakes at breakfast time, they might just want to close their eyes and offer thanks to this South African scientist. Farrant is in the news as the African/Arab laureate for the 2012 L’Oréal-Unesco Awards in Life Sciences that every year recognises five exceptional women scientists from around the world, from hundreds of nominations.
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Lifting small firms SA has two economies: a sophisticated formal retail sector as well as an informal retail and supplier sector struggling to access supply-chain opportunities. Gareth Ackerman, chairman of Pick n Pay addresses this conundrrum, so vital for our economic and employment growth.
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| Food-Bev Marketing, Trends and NPD |
The idea of a normal day being breakfast, lunch and dinner is a myth. Desserts are now eaten any time, sometimes even before breakfast. Lunch and dinner are increasingly combined into “linner” – this eat-what-I-want-when-I-want trend is changing some of the biggest names in food.
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A growing army of foodies in Europe and North America are drinking unpasteurised, unhomogenised milk – and it’s a topic that elicits heated debate on its safety and health benefits …
Weight Management 2011: Diet is out, zero is in … The number of new products launched in the US market featuring the term ‘diet’ in the brand or product name has plummeted in the last five years as weight conscious shoppers seek out more positive messages, according to market researchers.
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Unilever’s innovative ice structuring protein (ISP) has finally made its EU debut, appearing in the reformulated Solero Exotic Explosion and Solero Berry Explosion handheld ice creams. The products are now on sale in several European markets, including the UK, the Netherlands and Spain, reports Innova.
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Traditional market research focuses on what we know or think. Behavioural economics, is different. The focus is as much on what consumers actually do, and the reasons underlying that. Why? Because consumer behaviour is more often instinctive than rational. Behavioural economics aims to uncover and understand the invisible behavioural mechanics of the marketplace. Take a famous brand like Weetabix…
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Beverage manufacturers can now provide consumers with probiotics to benefit the immune and digestive system in their beverage products, without needing a refrigerated supply chain. In what is being called an engineering and biotechnological breakthrough, Ganeden Biotech and Unistraw International have announced a global partnership to include the probiotic GanedenBC30 into Unistraw’s award-winning probiotic straw concept.
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People love ’em or hate ’em, but now Marks & Spencer believes that it has come up with a way of increasing the popularity of Brussels sprouts – by turning them red and rebranding them as a health food.
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 ‘Radical’ PET bottle European packaging company, APPE, says a ‘technological advance’ now allows it to produce large-size PET bottles with recessed handles, a lightweighting concept that challenges blow-moulded HDPE rivals for dairy, juice and water products. It can be produced in sizes up to seven litres. |
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| Food Science, Ingredients and Health |
| Stevia is no silver bullet
“We have got a market that contains things called consumers and they tend to be rather fussy about taste,” says Derek Yach, senior vice president of global health policy for PepsiCo (and a South African!). There’s new interest in stevia with its EU approval last week – but according to Yach, stevia is not a magic bullet and is likely to form part of a new generation of natural sweeteners.
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Scientists have successfully demonstrated a method to use vitamin B12 as a vehicle for the oral delivery of the appetite-suppressing hormone PYY, according to a study published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. The discovery may lead to PYY-laced chewing gum or an oral tablet to assist people with weight loss.
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When the FBI dubbed counterfeiting “the crime of the century” they weren’t just talking about Prada handbags and Rolex watches. The counterfeit food industry is worth about $49 billion a year, according to the World Customs Institute, and it involves everything from fine food to boxed fruit juice. It is pervasive and poses real public health vulnerability.
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Afternoon sleepiness? Protein, not sugar, keeps us awake A new study finds that protein, not sugar, stimulates certain brain cells into keeping us awake, and also, by telling the body to burn calories, keeping us thin. The researchers suggest their discovery will increase understanding of obesity and sleep disorders.
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International Stuff
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Brussels bureaucrats have been ridiculed after banning drink manufacturers from claiming that water can prevent dehydration – and it has been greeted with much ridicule as yet another example of stifling and stupid European regulation…
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The European Union’s has proposed a blanket ban on shark finning, in which the fins are sliced off sharks, often while they are alive, and their carcasses dumped in the sea.
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In the bogs of south-eastern Massachusetts, the cranberry harvest is in, and it’s a big one. For AD Makepeace, the largest cranberry grower in the world, this year’s harvest is the biggest ever: 17 million kilograms, some of which will land on Thanksgiving plates this weekend. An article on how the cranberry has become a global winner, and survivor…
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Sealed Air announces company overhaul after Diversey takeover Sealed Air has unveiled plans to revamp its organisation in a bid to maximise the potential benefits from its $4.3bn acquisition of Diversey. The US-based company will be transformed into three mega units focused on food safety, plant hygiene and product protection.
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US: A shamed egg mogul departs A ruthless businessman who built one of the nation’s largest egg production operations from scratch, even as he racked up environmental and labour violations, is getting out of the business in disgrace after one scandal was too much to overcome: a nationwide salmonella outbreak.
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| Weird, Whacky and Wonderful Stuff |
When the owner of a small bakery outside London posted a deal for cupcakes on Groupon, she ended up getting more than she bargained for. Rachel Brown offered a 75 percent discount on a dozen cupcakes, expecting a few hundred orders. Instead, thousands started pouring in…
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Food bites… “Sensivores” rising
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 “A few years ago, I coined the term “sensivore” (a portmanteau for those of you who know their Lewis Carroll) to reference the “sensitive carnivore” movement I saw emerging. That trend continues today, with folks regularly raising issues related to the humane treatment of livestock, hens, etc. raised for slaughter, dairy and so on.
Today, more consumers—and by turn, the retail and foodservice manufacturing companies who serve those consumers—scrutinize each step from farm to fork and increasingly aspire to eradicate perceptually unnecessary abuses that exist in the process…
Manufacturers need to thoroughly vet suppliers to ensure that they mesh with existing corporate social and environmental responsibility parameters—and if you haven’t yet established those parameters, that should be your first step. Nobody should wait until regulators and activists make their supplier decisions for them in the heat of a national spotlight.
Practices that most consumers would consider inhumane are common in the industry, but continued pressure could very well change that—particularly when such prominent companies align themselves with humane-leaning concerns.”
Douglas Peckenpaugh, culinary editor of Food Product Design
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