The plant based challenge

Many traditional recipes for confectionery products contain dairy ingredients. With something like caramel those dairy products and the processes used are integral to creating the flavours we all know and love.

That’s why developing specific vegan friendly products, especially those that replicate existing favourites, is an ongoing search for the New Product Development (NPD) teams here at OV.

Types of vegan friendly products

To understand more about the different types of vegan suitable products in the OV range, as well as how the NPD teams go about the task of creating some of them, we spoke to Andrew Lofthouse, Business Development Manager at OV Harrogate.

Andrew explains that there are really three broad types of vegan friendly product in the OV range:

• Naturally plant based products, like honeycomb, that never contained any dairy in their original ingredients
• Products that have not been specifically developed to be vegan but that happen to contain only plant-based ingredients
• Products developed specifically to be vegan friendly – either to match an existing product or to provide something new

He says:

“Everything we make in confectionery tends to have butter or cream in it. So, it’s a big task to create something without those key ingredients. To do it you’re typically using new ingredients. And introducing new ingredients to the factory that are different to what we usually do will incur a cost.”

That means there needs to be a solid business case for making vegan products, and the current rise in demand from consumers and food producers has been just the catalyst to drive new product creation.

CREATING A NEW VEGAN PRODUCT

So, where do we start when trying to create a new product? Like all new products the test runs take place in our NPD labs, trialling small batches over and over until a solution is reached.

Over to Andrew again: “So, if we want to remove the butter. We know butter is 88% fat content. So, we look for something that will replace that and give a similar mouth feel. Often that means replacing one ingredient with two or even three.” 

Our teams at OV have a thorough knowledge of ingredients and how they will react, based on years of experience. They will experiment with other fats, coconut and other plant-based milks and other vegan ingredients until they find the perfect fit.

Andrew adds: “Often you’ll begin with the end point of a product. Most of our products are used as toppings or inclusions, so you’ll be getting maybe 10% of what we produce and 90% of an ice cream or a cake. That means we need to consider how the new product will behave, how it will mix with its surroundings and test the overall flavour as well as the product on its own.”

Take a closer look at our entire vegan friendly confectionery range or get in touch to find out how our NPD teams can help you create your next vegan product.