UK-headquartered research company, Campden BRI, is inviting companies to join research into the evaluation of viable routes for sugar and fat reduction in chocolate and related products for its chocolate confectionery club. In addition, it is exploring new techniques for the assessment and potential mitigation of moisture and fat migration.

The company has announced that the research will provide a better understanding of the factors that influence the quality and help to prevent or delay quality defects such as bloom development. It will also provide a detailed evaluation of the ways to reduce sugar and fat in chocolate-based confectionery to help companies optimize recipes for reformulation.

The chocolate and confectionery club will be of interest to ingredient suppliers, chocolate manufacturers and manufacturers of processing equipment, Campden BRI has said.

It has been announced that the project will explore the following:

• The factors and mechanisms that influence fat and moisture migration.
• The effect that ingredients and processing can have during production and shelf-life.
• The interactions between ingredients (milk powders, cocoa solids, sugars, fats, emulsifiers and inclusions) and the influence of processing conditions.
• Sugar and fat replacement – alternative ingredients and reduction routes.
• A quantitative way of measuring how moisture and fat migrates within multi-component chocolate systems.
• The regulatory and labeling considerations when using alternative ingredients to replac sugar and fat.

The pre-competitive research will be steered by the club of participating companies and each member will be able to exploit the findings for their own commercial benefit. The project will start in 2018.

The announcement of the latest research project from Campden BRI comes hot on the heels of a survey into industry attitudes to innovation earlier in the year. Its key results included findings that the majority of companies plan their innovation pipeline 9-12 months ahead and time, and resources are the biggest barriers to innovation.