Get to Know OV: Different Customers. Different Needs. One OV.

As part of our Get to Know OV series, we are looking at who we serve across OV and why understanding the customer, application and market is just as important as understanding the product.

Food & Beverage Manufacturers: Finding the Right Solution

For our food and beverage manufacturing customers, the conversation often starts with an application or a technical requirement.

What will work in a cookie? What can add texture to an ice cream? Which inclusions will perform through a production process? How can we create the right flavour, colour or visual impact at scale?

Across bakery, ice cream, chocolate, confectionery, desserts, cereals, snacks, beverages and more, our role is to help customers navigate the OV portfolio and find the solution that makes sense for what they are trying to create.

Sometimes that means selecting an existing ingredient.

Sometimes it means combining different capabilities from across OV.

And sometimes it means working together to develop something new.

The important part is not showing everything we can make. It is understanding what will work for that customer, in that application and in that market.

Retail & Private Label: Moving From Opportunity to Shelf

Retail moves differently.

Trends can emerge quickly, shelf space is highly competitive and a new idea has to do more than look interesting. It has to earn its place in the category.

That changes the conversation.

Our Retail and Private Label teams can work across the journey from identifying an opportunity and developing a product through to packaging, production and delivery.

And the pace can be fast.

See the opportunity. Develop the product. Put something tangible in front of the customer.

But speed alone is not enough. Retailers need ideas that make sense for their shoppers, their category and their market.

That is why understanding what is happening on shelf, what consumers are responding to and how tastes differ between markets becomes an important part of product development.

The aim is not simply to bring retailers more ideas.

It is to bring them the right ideas.

Wholesale & Foodservice: Making It Practical

For Wholesale and Foodservice customers, practicality becomes especially important.

A product can be exciting, but it also needs to work in a bakery, café, restaurant, QSR or other professional kitchen.

That means thinking about more than the ingredient itself.

Format matters. Ease of use matters. Versatility matters. And the product needs to make sense for the realities of the customer using it every day.

Across OV, selected ingredients, inclusions, toppings and decorations are available in formats suited to professional kitchens and foodservice applications.

And because many of those products originate from capabilities we also use elsewhere in OV, there is an opportunity to bring a much wider world of sweet ingredients into foodservice.

The question becomes less “What products do we have for Foodservice?”

And more “Which OV products make sense for Foodservice?”

Different Markets Need Different Answers

The differences do not stop with customer type.

What works in one geography may not be the right answer in another.

Taste preferences change. Applications change. Commercial requirements change. The relevance of trends changes too.

A movement such as protein might create a strong opportunity in one part of the market but have limited relevance somewhere else. A product that works commercially in the UK may need a different flavour profile, format or proposition for customers elsewhere in Europe.

That is why we do not believe in one size fits all.

We want to understand the bigger market picture and then ask a much more useful question:

What does this mean for the customer in front of us?

The Advantage of One OV

These customer worlds are different, but they do not exist in isolation.

Working across food manufacturing, Retail, Private Label, Wholesale and Foodservice gives us different perspectives on the same market.

We can see what is happening on retail shelves, what is appearing in QSR, what manufacturers are trying to solve and which flavours, textures and formats are beginning to move across categories.

An idea in one part of the market can inspire thinking somewhere else.

And specialist knowledge from one OV site can open opportunities for customers working with another.

That is where the breadth of OV becomes particularly valuable.

Not because every customer needs everything we do.

But because we can bring together the right parts of OV for the customer and opportunity in front of us.

Come and Get to Know OV

At Fi Europe 2026, you will be able to explore that breadth for yourself.

Our team will be bringing together ingredients, applications and ideas from across OV and showing how our different capabilities can support customers across markets and categories.

If you are heading to Frankfurt this November, come and tell us what you are working on.

Then let us see what OV can bring to it.

Fi Europe 2026 | Frankfurt | 17–19 November | Stand 30C44