Hydrosol and sister company Planteneers from the Stern-Wywiol Gruppe displayed its digital configurator Plantbaser at IFFA 2020 in Frankfurt, Germany. The device helps food manufacturers seamlessly realize a plant-based meat alternative from concept to completion in two weeks. The configurator marks the culmination of the plant-based concepts and trends which the group has been developing for the last two years.  

Florian Bark, product manager, at Hydrosol and Planteneers, tells FoodIngredientsFirst from the showroom floor: “The plant-based is quite a new project within our strategy for digitalization and we saw that there’s a high need for making unique recipes for our clients and to shorten up the way of sampling prototypes of the clients who are interested in [producing] cold cuts or nuggets or a burger or whatever in the plant-based area.

Like a car configurator, the user can visit the homepage, go to the link to the Plantbaser platform and selec the properties of the products he wants. 

“He can selec the properties of color, taste and salt content, for example, and this is the starting point of the discussion with our sales team. This saves the clients and us much time because we know what we want to achieve,” says Bark.

“Shared Planet” leads Innova Market Insights’ Top Ten Trends for 2022 which underscores that consumers now rank planetary health as their number one concern. Consumers today are more ethically and environmentally conscious, so food brands need to work alongside the public to breed confidence in the claims attached to products.

Trendwatching in the plant-based arenaFlorian Bark, product manager, at Hydrosol and Planteneers. 
Hydrosol and Planteneers focused on key trends in the plant-based market, including affordability, clean label, sodium reduction and hybridization. 

“We have salami at the booth, which has 30% less sodium inside, so it’s a trend of sodium reduction in meat products. We have a stabilizing system for sausages without phosphate on the clean label concept,” Bark explains.

“We’re using the help of other proteins to help the emulsion get well established in the bone chopper, and in the end, the product will have the same bite and knack as when you use phosphate as a bone chopping agent,” he says.

Reducing the meat content in burger patties, nuggets or sausages and replacing it with vegetables, legumes and fiber cater to the ongoing consumer demand for healthy indulgence. 

With Planteneers’ compounds, meat manufacturers can implement new ideas alongside their core business and enter new market segments. Depending on the recipe, protein-rich pulses like lentils or chickpeas are used, along with vegetables that contain the right flavor. 

The new PLUSmulson series stabilizing system compensates for the function of the missing meat proteins. It’s suitable for making many different products and is simple to use and easy to integrate into existing production processes. 

“Free from” is another major trend. In the meat category, that primarily means less salt and less phosphate. Here again, Hydrosol has developed new concepts, for example, making phosphate-free sausages. 

New clean label solutions for meat products that use natural ingredients include freshness preservation, appealing color and phosphate-free brine substitutes.

Affordability of utmost importancePlant-based sushi developed by Planteneers, Stern-Wywiol Gruppe.
Economic production calls for solutions to counter rising raw material prices with significant price increases for some ingredients. The objective of raw material substitution is to maintain the consistent quality of the final product within its existing price category.

“In the last few months, we saw that the raw materials increased. We saw meat increase in price very much and customers are asking us for recipes for economic (affordable) products. So we are presenting our new system Hydrotop CS50 which allows our customers to make sausages with a lower meat content,” Bark explains. 

Planteneers showcased options that meat and convenience manufacturers can use to branch out into the plant-based category and their core business.

With its systems, vendors can extend their product lines with a broad spectrum of plant-based alternatives. Planteneers assists its customers throughout the entire process, from the initial idea to upscaling for large-scale production. 

The plant-based offerings can be made on a company’s existing machines, reducing the need to invest in new equipment. 

Planteneers showcased alternatives to chicken strips, kebabs and steaks at IFFA. For creative variety, there were cheese alternatives such as filling in vegan sausages or plant-based convenience products like cordon bleu, raw fish alternatives, filets, fish fingers and calamari. In addition, there is a plant-based burger sauce and vegan dressings for deli salads.