The sales of Taura Natural Ingredients’ real fruit pieces in the US have doubled in the past three years, the company has revealed.
CEO Peter Dehasque has attributed the increase to recent agreements to supply its fruit ingredients to companies operating in the booming US healthy single-serve snack foods sector – many of them new entrants into the category.
The country is now the fastest growing market for snack bars, according to a market analysis conducted for Taura Natural Ingredients by CPL Business Consultants.
Sales are worth an estimated US$7.3 billion a year and are increasing at a compound annual growth rate of 7.9%.
“There’s been huge growth in the number of entrepreneurs moving into US healthy snacks with premium concepts that meet consumers’ needs by offering natural health and wellness, convenience and of course great taste,” says Dehasque.
“In particular, there’s increasing demand for snack foods that are certified genetically modified organism-free, gluten-free, Kosher and organic.”
“Our high quality real fruit pieces and pastes are the perfect match for products carrying these claims and, as sales of added-value snacks have taken off in the States, so have our US sales,” he says.
“Three of our top 10 customers globally are now US companies, with the nutritional bar and toddler snack sectors accounting for the highest share of our US sales.”
The fruit pieces are produced in Belgium and New Zealand and supplied to the American market through a sales office based in Virginia.
Taura’s products are made using the Ultra Rapid Concentration process, which concentrates the taste, texture and natural goodness of fruit into pieces, flakes and pastes for use in applications such as nutritional snack bars, fruit snacks, chocolate, baked goods and confectionery.
“The snacks market is crowded and competitive, and both existing players and new entrants into the category are looking for ingredients that will give their products an edge,” says Dehasque.
Recent innovations by Taura Natural Ingredients include Mini’s, which are tiny pieces of fruit the size of a grain of quinoa, which are believed to be the world’s smallest fruit pieces.
Product developers at Taura Natural Ingredients have also combined fruit with protein, fiber and caffeine in a range of functional fruit pieces, and with ancient grains such as chia and amaranth to create healthful, gluten-free fruit pieces with a delicious crispy texture.
