Consumer demand for affordability leads food manufactures to focus on reformulation and potential ingredient replacements, says Brenntag APAC Strategic Marketing Director; meanwhile, consumers are still willing to pay more for sustainable options

2024 the year of the ‘conscious consumer’

The concept of the conscious consumer is a state of mind identifying global trends that are of growing importance to consumers. Alongside sustainability and health, affordability is a definite consideration and what end users want today.

Trend #3: addressing affordability through reformulation

The current cost of living crisis is squeezing consumer spending everywhere, and with ‘stagflation’ and commodity price rises likely to continue for the rest of 2024, there is no escaping the role that cost will play in consumer decision making. With this in mind, ‘reformulation’ is a term that is going to figure heavily in product development project discussions. “We are seeing a lot of manufacturers focusing on reformulation exercises,” says Sherlyn Sim, APAC Strategic Marketing Director at Brenntag. “That might be a sugar reduction project to avoid a high sugar tax or the replacement of existing ingredients with more cost-effective alternatives that offer either equivalent or improved performance, for example.”

But reformulation must not compromise the consumer experience, cautions Dr Nadia D’Incecco, EMEA Strategic Marketing Director at Brenntag. “Despite being on stricter budgets, consumers are still looking for foods that are tasty and high quality,”she notes. Our Innovation & Application Centers have been involved with numerous reformulation projects recently, from reducing gluten (an expensive component) in recipes to developing vitamin & mineral mixes that enable affordable fortification.

Weighing up priorities

Affordability is inextricably linked with the sustainability and health trends, as products that are produced sustainably or have added health benefits often carry a higher price tag, which can be a pain point for consumers. Determining whether a product will be viewed as overpriced by the market requires a sound understanding of its target audience and the trade-offs they will be willing to make.

“Despite rising inflation, some consumers are willing to pay more if they perceive that the value is worth paying for,”says Sherlyn. This is where reformulation solutions that will bring a sustainability or health benefit as well as a cost saving can elevate a concept.

Cracking the egg replacement challenge

One of the best examples of this is a vegan egg replacement solution developed recently by our Innovation & Application Center in Italy. “Eggs are expensive and are subject to price fluctuation, which has a major impact on the price of the finished product. Recognizing this, we developed a solution to partially or fully replace eggs in recipes,”says Nadia.

But she says that this solution is particularly interesting because it tackles two trending topics: sustainability and affordability. “Some markets, such as Saudi Arabia, are interested in adopting this solution for cost reasons, whereas in Europe, the sustainability benefits are more of a priority for manufacturers,” she says.