The ingredient specialists Cargill-Cerestar are launching new cereal bar systems at the upcoming Food Ingredients Europe in response to increasing demand from food manufacturers and consumers.
The merged company has drawn on a number of its business units for the project, such as Cargill Soy Protein Solutions and Cerestar Food & Pharma Specialties Europe, to produce the product containing soya proteins, the sugar-free sweetener malitol, resistant starch to promote gut health and glucose syrup as binder.
Henk Jan Buurman, commercial manager of Cargill Soy Protein Solutions in Europe, said the cereal bar "provides a glimpse of future product developments".
Cargill-Cerestar's scale means that it is one of few companies that can create an end product using ingredients sourced entirely from its own activities and developed in its own R&D facilities. Customers benefit from reductions in logistics and from the lower cost of dealing with only one supplier, claims the firm.
Cereal bars have seen considerable growth in Europe as consumers look for healthy but portable snacks yet a recent Datamonitor report suggests that the sector is massively underexploited. While cereal bars account for 14 per cent of Sweden's confectionery sales, elsewhere in Europe the share is than 5 per cent. The healthy snacks represent however a major area of innovation in the saturated confectionery sector.
Johan Peremans and John Van de Sype, from the 10-person Cargill-Cerestar team developing the cereal bars, will be at Food Ingredients Europe, taking place from 18-20 November 2003 in Franfurt, Germany, to discuss the project.