Nestle R&R launch new ice cream & frozen food venture

Following the successful conclusion of the required regulatory clearances, Nestlé and R&R have completed the transaction to create Froneri, a new joint venture in ice cream, frozen food and chilled dairy.

As announced in April, Froneri will combine Nestlé and R&R’s ice cream activities in Europe, the Middle East (excluding Israel), Argentina, Australia, Brazil, the Philippines and South Africa. Nestlé and PAI Partners have equal equity interests in the joint venture.

Froneri will also include Nestlé’s European frozen food business (excluding pizza and retail frozen food in Italy), as well as its chilled dairy business in the Philippines.

With sales of around 2.6 billion Euro, Froneri will operate in 22 countries across the world, employing around 15,000 people. As announced in April, the company will be headquartered in the UK and will have sites primarily in Europe, the Middle East, (excluding Israel), Argentina, Australia, Brazil, the Philippines and South Africa.

Froneri’s leadership team combines industry expertise and business acumen from across Nestlé and R&R. The company’s board of directors is chaired by Luis Cantarell, Nestlé’s Executive Vice President, Europe, Middle East and North Africa and its CEO is Ibrahim Najafi, formerly CEO of R&R.

Source: http://fdiforum.net/mag/nestle-rr-launch-new-ice-cream-venture/

Frozen bakery and snacks market would witness a rapid growth in Asia Pacific region. Frozen potatoes and frozen vegetables & fruits together constitute around 14% of the overall frozen food market revenue. Increasing sales of organic fries and snacks has created a huge demand of organic and sweet frozen potatoes in the developed markets

Explore in Detail about Frozen Food Industry at: https://goo.gl/wBrcqa

Gluten-free beer that tastes good?

Don’t eat gluten? Then you probably don’t drink it either, which puts beer mostly off limits.

 The good news is, more and more gluten-free beers are appearing on the market. Any decent beer aisle will have at least one and possibly a half dozen. Brands like Lakefront Brewery, Green’s and even Anheuser-Busch offer naturally gluten-free beers.

These beers are generally made with rice, buckwheat, millet and sorghum, and for those with celiac disease or who simply want to avoid gluten, these are the only beers that matter.

Trouble is, they aren’t supposed to be very good. Barley and wheat, the two grains on which the beer industry most heavily relies, don’t just add gluten to a beer. They also add lots of sweet, full flavor -part of what makes beer taste so good. Beers made with gluten-free grains are often said to be thinner and lacking in body. (I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know that I’ve had one.)

However, Brendan Moylan tells me he recently tasted some gluten-free beers - an IPA and a pilsner -that taste great, just like normal beer. That’s because they basically are normal beers. The brewery that made them (Moylan couldn’t remember the brewery’s name but says they’re in San Francisco) added a natural compound that breaks down gluten in fermented beer. The enzyme eliminates nearly, though not quite all, the gluten in a beer, making it more or less acceptable for the gluten-free crowd.

Moylan was so impressed that he did the same thing himself, at Moylan’s Brewing Co. in Novato. His brewers added a dash of Brewer’s Clarex, the product name for the gluten-pulling enzyme, to a batch of Moylan’s golden ale during cold storage.

“It came out really well,” says owner Brendan Moylan. “It tastes like a real beer.”

The enzyme that does this trick is made by a species of mold called Aspergillus niger, which food technicians cultivate in order to isolate the gluten-pulling component. The enzyme reduces a beer’s gluten content to less than 20 parts per million of gluten. This is enough to meet the general international definition of “gluten-free.” The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, though, only allows beers treated with this enzyme to be called “gluten-reduced,” not “gluten-free” — which seems fair enough. Stone Brewing Co. and a brand called Omission have made gluten-reduced beers using this technique.

Even though gluten-free beers made with gluten-free grains haven’t been highly rated in general, some brewers would rather make a gluten-free beer the real way than cheat by adding the enzyme.

Read More at: http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/10/26/gluten-free-beer-that-tastes-good/

The market, based on beer production, is segmented into microbreweries and macro breweries. With a global change in drinking preferences, the demand for microbreweries is considerably increasing and is anticipated to register a high CAGR of 9.3% over the forecast period, 2015-2020.

Get a detailed research in Beer Industry at: https://goo.gl/CZEVJM

Packaged food sector appears profitable for the future

The outlook for the packaged foods industry has improved to “positive” from “stable,” according to the latest analysis from Moody’s Investors Service.

Despite little prospective improvement in top-line growth, Moody’s said successful efficiency initiatives across the food industry have brightened the industry’s outlook. The analysis was published in a Sept. 30 report, “Going positive as cost cutting fuels margin and cash flow growth.”

“Although top-line sales growth continues to limp along, more companies are starting to see a bigger pay-off from large-scale cost savings strategies,” the ratings agency said. “As such, we now expect core operating income to rise 4.5 percent to 5.5 percent from our previous call of 4 percent to 4.5 percent for the next 12 to 18 months, excluding Mondelez International Inc.  (Baa1 stable) and Kraft Heinz Foods Co. (Baa3 stable). When including these two, our operating income forecast rises significantly, to 8 percent to 9 percent growth.”

Explore the research in Packaged Food Industry at:  https://goo.gl/8Jh9JO

Moody’s estimated that 65 percent of the food industry’s operating profit growth is accounted for by Mondelez and Kraft, and that the two companies are in the midst of major restructuring efforts.

“Even when excluding Mondelez and Kraft Heinz, the majority of companies in our rated universe are generating stronger margins through efficiency improvements,” Moody’s said. The agency said benefits from cost cutting will become significantly more apparent in 2017.

Pressures on sales growth are not expected to let up, Moody’s said. Projecting 1 percent to 2 percent growth over the coming 12 to 18 months, the agency said drags will include weak agricultural commodity prices, a lack of new product innovation and intense price competition.

“While we expect that US consumer spending will continue to benefit from higher employment, low inflation and a strong dollar, we also expect that incremental discretionary consumer spending will be directed disproportionately to savings or other consumer sectors such as health care, home improvement and automobiles,” Moody’s said. “Within the food sector, flat away-from-home dining will not contribute much benefit to food makers and could become a headwind. Falling food prices and healthier eating trends have encouraged more consumers to prepare their meals at home from scratch using lower margin less processed ingredients.

Read more:        http://m.meatpoultry.com/articles/news_home/Business/2016/10/Packaged_food_sector_appears_p.aspx?ID=%7BECB16314-E5B9-48AF-A2CB-498A6AC792AD%7D&cck=1

Can Plant-Based Foods Save Our Food System?

Few topics rile people up quite like politics. This election year is indeed no exception. But if there’s one subject that rivals the intense vitriol of political name-calling and Amendment waving, it’s the case against eating meat. Or rather, the case for eating more plants.

While politics may stay a heated battleground ad infinitum, one groups is working to heal the dietary rift between steak and stalk eaters. And the proof is in the growing demand for plant-based foods that satisfy–even fool– the most committed (and critical) carnivores.

It’s a trend that is only going to continue, says Michele Simon, Executive Director of the Plant Based Foods Association (PBFA) -the trade group for producers of plant-based meats, eggs, and nondairy milk products.

With more than fifty member companies since the group launched last winter, the PBFA is giving a long overdue collective voice to the plant-based foods industry, and the growing number of consumers who want more of these products.

Know more about Meat Substitute Industry and its forecast at: https://goo.gl/Hq3ts5

“These foods are really important,” says Simon. And a growing body of research supports her statement.

Meat consumption has been linked to serious health risks including heart disease, stroke, and certain types of cancer, while an increase in consuming plant-based foods shows numerous health benefits, namely decreasing the risk of many of those diseases caused by excessive consumption of animal products.

But raising animals for food is also a serious health risk for the planet, as animal agriculture is one of the leading producers of greenhouse gases.

There are many expert predictions about what effects a warming planet will have–not only on our weather patterns–but also on our food and water supplies, and our ability to fight off common infections. Raising livestock is immensely resource intensive; with more than ten billion animals raised for food annually (not including fish), the required amount of fresh water, grains, grasses–and medically important antibiotics - is simply staggering. And it’s unsustainable.

While bucolic imagery of happy grass-grazing cows and frolicking chickens dominate the marketing campaigns of Big Meat and Dairy, ninety-nine percent of all animal foods in the U.S. come from dark and crowded, air- and water-polluting factory farms. Working in a factory farm, slaughterhouse, or meat processing facility, brings some of the highest risk of serious job-related injuries including amputations and accidental death.

That’s not to say the livestock industry isn’t changing - it certainly is. It’s been a most victorious year for egg-laying hens - at least, the ones who will be laying eggs in 2025 - the deadline set by most major supermarkets and leading fast food chains including McDonald’s, to transition away from tiny and cramped battery cages, the egg industry norm for more than a half-century.

Demand for pasture-raised and organic meat, eggs, and dairy products are also on the rise. Advocacy groups like the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute continue to spotlight abusers of the organic label when it comes to animal welfare violations. But transforming animal agriculture isn’t enough—particularly when the environment, and our health are at stake. Ethical and environmental improvements to our food system are not only vital to consumer demand, driven primarily by a millennial interest in cleaner food, but also to shareholders.

Tyson Foods, the largest producer of chicken, beef, and pork in the world, recently made headlines when it announced a five percent stake in Beyond Meat, the El Segundo, Calif., based outfit making “real meat made from plants,” as its product labels boast.

Beyond Meat and other plant-based startups like Impossible Foods, are reimagining, among other staples, the iconic veggie burger. The ubiquitous vegan offering often compared to hockey pucks, is today, nearly indistinguishable from beef. Both Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods recently launched veggie burgers that “bleed,” thanks in part to pulverized beets and carefully formulated recipes designed to mimic the flavors and textures of traditional burgers. Products like these are bringing more meat eaters to the category, even if they don’t give up meat entirely. And while some vegans find the burgers too close to the real thing for their taste, there’s no denying the impact products like these are having on our food system.

“Nothing will force businesses to change faster than the risk of their financial backing being pulled out from under them,” Leah Garcés, director at Compassion in World Farming USA, told Food Navigator.

Worldwide, sales of plant-based meats surpassed $4 billion this year, up 42 percent from 2010, according to Reuters. That growing interest is enough to warrant the efforts of the PBFA to bring more support and funding to the industry. Like other trade groups—think those representing animal products, sugar, soda, and tobacco—the Plant Based Foods Association is focused not just on critical policymaking, but also on education, and bringing more consumers to plant foods.

Simon says we shouldn’t look at plant-based foods as punishment for all of our meat-eating damage to the planet or our health. It’s not bland retribution. It’s deliciousness and doing good all in one.

“What’s so cool about the plant kingdom is just how big it is, how many options we have,” says Simon. “The animal [food] world is focused on only a few animals, and we have the whole entire plant kingdom just filled with possibility.”

A look at some of the PBFA member companies proves that indeed there are a seemingly limitless number of plant-based options.

“We’re seeing incredible innovation drive these categories,” says Simon.

“For so long we’ve been thought of as a category just for vegans and vegetarians,” says Brad Lahrman, Marketing Director at Lightlife, a member of the PBFA, “but that’s only a small number of our consumers.”

Lightlife, which produces dozens of meat alternatives including Smart Dogs, the number one selling meat-free hot dog, has been around since the 1970s. Like many early meat alternative brands, it was relegated to a corner in the refrigerated case of supermarkets and health food stores, “typecast as being just for ‘alternative’ diets,” says Lahrman. Products like Smart Dogs, or the ubiquitous meat-free Thanksgiving roast made by Tofurky, another PBFA member company, have been longtime punch lines of many jokes poking fun at the vegan and vegetarian diet. And while the jokes may still persist (as does the common misspelling; there’s no “e” in Tofurky), consumers continue to embrace plant-based proteins at a record pace.

“Our industrial way of raising animals for meat is ruining the planet,” says Simon. And, she explains, it’s not just tree-hugging vegans who care about how animals are treated, or finding alternate sources of protein, “meat-eaters care just as much about where their food comes from.”

Lahrman agrees, and points to significant growth in conventional grocery channels like Walmart and Kroger, where he says Lightlife sales are up 21 percent, “most of that isn’t coming from vegans,” he explains.

Aside from basic fruit and vegetable consumption, on the rise thanks to an increase in farmers markets and efforts to whittle down the number of food deserts in the U.S., nondairy milk is the leading plant-based category, and it’s taking a toll on conventional dairy.

“Driven by negative health perceptions, reduced retail prices and exports and a growing number of non-dairy alternatives, the US dairy milk market has declined in recent years,” reports Mintel. Dairy sales in the U.S. dropped more than seven percent in 2015, and are expected to decline another eleven percent by 2020. At the same time, nondairy beverage sales grew at more than nine percent, hitting more than $1.9 billion in 2015.

Know about Dairy Alternative Industry at: https://goo.gl/N6hYYy

The cheese alternative category has too seen tremendous growth. Miyoko’s Kitchen, a founding PBFA member company, has grown from four to forty employees in under two years. The company has led the way in traditional cheesemaking procedures using nondairy milks. Now with a slew of imitators, Miyoko’s products have transformed the category from what was once a waxy, greasy, and utterly unpleasant nonmelting nondairy cheese experience, now to one of the most exciting areas of the plant-based industry. Fermenting and aging cheeses, and Miyoko’s newest product called VeganMozz that’s nearly indistinguishable from dairy mozzarella, are category game-changers, pivoting traditional dairy eaters toward nondairy alternatives that are better for their health, and for the planet.

Read More at: http://www.organicauthority.com/can-plant-based-foods-save-our-food-system

The Next Hot Trends in Food

You may not have heard of moringa or regenerative grazing yet. But there’s a good chance you will before long.

Not too far in the future, when you reach for a healthy drink, it might be full of water from a cactus.

Your main course at dinner might be a pear-like fruit from Southeast Asia that does a remarkable job of imitating meat. The next candy bar your children bite into might be infused with mushrooms that help cut down on the sugar needed to sweeten the treat. And their breakfast cereal might be colored with algae instead of chemicals.

Why the wave of exotic delights? Nutrition science - and customers’ rapidly changing tastes are forcing the food business to search ever further afield for new edibles.

Everybody knows standards change - fat was bad, for instance, until the big no-nos became carbs and gluten - and each time they do, a rash of new products appear that claim to be packed with good stuff and free of things that cause harm.

But now it’s no longer enough to claim a product is simply free of something that’s frowned upon. Consumers want to know that the bad ingredient hasn’t been replaced with something equally bad or worse. And they want to know the story behind their food - how it was grown or raised, and whether its production and distribution was kind to the environment. The less processed and simpler the ingredients, the better. That has left food and restaurant companies rushing to clean up their labels with ingredients derived from natural sources consumers can understand and pronounce.

For a trend to go mainstream, it has to provide health benefits, be easily comprehensible, make economic sense for the manufacturer, and of course taste good, says David Garfield, food-industry consultant at AlixPartners. It’s even better if the product tells a story and has third-party verification, such as a certified-organic label.

Of course, not all foods that are popular on the fringe go mainstream. Cricket bars, for instance, haven’t taken off in the U.S., even though eating insects is common in 80% of the world and they are high in protein. “It will be hard to overcome the yuck factor in the U.S.,” Mr. Garfield says.

But crickets aside, food experts have identified the super-healthy foods and concepts that are hitting supermarket shelves, and have the potential to become the next açaí berry or coconut water. Here’s a closer look at them.

The next buzzword: regenerative grazing

“Grass fed,” once a progressive term in the food world, has become a mainstream buzzword used to attract consumers who want to eat beef that doesn’t come from cows raised in feedlots. It has expanded from expensive meat sold at Whole Foods Market Inc. and steak burritos at Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. to Chili’s Grill & Bar, which recently began offering grass-fed burgers, and Annie’s Mac & Cheese, which uses milk from grass-fed cows.

Now, Ms. Abbott argues, it’s not enough just to know the diet animals were fed, but also to understand the impact those animals have on the environment.

There is a growing movement called regenerative agriculture, in which different farming practices are used to restore soil degraded by planting and harvesting crops. One way to regenerate the topsoil is to graze cattle or bison on land used for growing crops, because their manure and left-behind forage act as natural fertilizers.

In the next three years, Ms. Abbott expects, restaurants and food companies will highlight that their grass-fed beef was raised in a regenerative-grazing fashion. She adds, though, that there would have to be a verification system designed to ensure the claim has meaning.

Explore about Dairy Alternative Industry at: https://goo.gl/N6hYYy

The next meat alternative: jackfruit

In health guidelines issued early this year, official U.S. dietitians say Americans eat too much meat. That’s giving fodder to new meat alternatives aiming to replace the usual meat replacement, tofu, which has worn out its welcome with many consumers.

There are burgers made with protein extracted from yellow peas, a molecule called heme that makes plants taste like beef and faux pulled pork made from shredded jackfruit.

Equity research firm Wedbush estimates the overall industry of plant-based alternative foods, including replacements for meat and dairy, has $3.5 billion in annual sales. Analysts there expect that to continue growing as a result of increasing health and sustainability concerns around meat, as well as new technologies like the heme molecule that make the texture and taste of vegetables more similar to meat.

Explore about Meat Substitute Industry at: https://goo.gl/Hq3ts5

Of all the budding meat substitutes, food experts say jackfruit has the most potential to go mainstream because of its meaty texture and ability to absorb the flavors in which it’s cooked. A large fruit with a spiky outer shell, it comes from trees grown mostly in South America and Southeast Asia, but it’s increasingly making its way to the U.S. The inner flesh somewhat pear-like when raw develops a savory flavor when cooked.

“People who want to avoid soy are looking for alternatives and a lot of the alternatives are highly processed,” says Ms. Abbott of Hartman Group. “This is just fruit that’s been minimally processed and seasoned with things you have in your kitchen.”

Read more at: http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-next-hot-trends-in-food-1476670682

PITTSBURGH IS GETTING A MUSEUM SOLELY DEDICATED TO BEER

A group of local beer enthusiasts is hoping to bring Pittsburgh Brew, a museum solely dedicated to, yes, beer. Want to help fulfill the laudable goal of a destination dedicated to helping people "understand all aspects of what it means to be human -- our sociology, our anthropology, our history, our economics, our politics"? Luckily, you can: the team launches its Indiegogo campaign on October 19th.

                                                                                                                                           

Know the Latest Trends in Beer Industry at : https://goo.gl/xM9aEC       

 Brew's official location will be decided once the fundraising campaign ends, though the stated goal is to build the 50,000sqft space within two miles of Downtown Pittsburgh, an area that already holds the Andy Warhol Museum, the Carnegie Science Center, and John Heinz Regional Historical Center.

Possible exhibits include everything from "Baseball, America’s Pastime and Beer" to the much more vague and tantalizing "Beer Heroes and Villains." Additionally, in a stroke of genius, these folks decided to include… get ready… a 300-seat gastropub somewhere on the museum’s grounds.

In other words, there’ll be a place to “sample the merchandise” amongst a (more or less) official beer hall of fame and a Brewers Wall, where every brewery currently in operation will be featured. A tall order in the boom or bust world of brewing, but we salute the effort.

And yes, grandma, it will also have a gift shop.

If you want to start celebrating Pittsburgh's greatest new museum in person and can't wait until the expected 2018 opening, the fundraising campaign's launch party will be on the 19th at James Street Gastropub.

Source: https://www.thrillist.com/drink/pittsburgh/brew-museum-of-beer-comes-to-pittsburgh

How supply chain virtualization with IoT preserves quality, freshness in frozen foods

IoT enables the frozen foods being transported from the farm to the retail outlets to preserve their quality and freshness.

Many supermarkets, catering kitchens, distributors and more deal with various perishable products every day. Yet the fear of incurring losses due to the regulatory and malfunction issues have forced many of today’s food manufacturers to rely on technology, according to industry experts from Allied Market Research, Portland, Ore. In fact, researchers analyzing the size and share of the frozen foods market reveal that technology, such as Internet of Things (IoT) has finally stepped in to avoid such situations.

IoT helps prevent the downtime that often occurs with broken equipment and helps do away with food and energy wastage. Sounds like a clear win-win doesn’t it? Here’s how technology has contributed to the development of new retail products.

Get a complete research in Frozen Food Industry at: https://goo.gl/eN8gyz

IoT to determine the future of frozen food market

There are many reasons why IoT has revolutionized the way the frozen food market has operated so far. The competitive business climate has virtually compelled every food processing company to consider an edge to expand into the marketplace and double their profits to meet customer demands. IoT works as a tailor-made solution for such environment. The technology has enabled processors to operate efficiently with analytics platforms to generate, analyze and communicate critical data.

IoT is also revolutionizing the techniques applied by consumer packaged goods to target, involve and even communicate with end users during day-to-day operations. Moreover, with the growing adaption rate of the connected devices, IoT technology is anticipated to harmonize the fast increasing volume of data that affects the different stages of operation, including product planning, manufacturing, marketing and more.

IoT helps in tracking the food products through a highly complicated supply chain. Yes, technologies such as RFID will soon assist several CPG brands to efficiently monitor and track the routes throughout the global supply chain.

Optimizing & controlling in real-time 

Digital transformation and business re-engineering solutions have led to the discovery of end-to-end solutions especially for fresh produce frozen and packaged foods. One farm-to-fork solution, for example, helps in the transportation of produce and meat grown at different farms miles and miles away to be delivered as fresh as it was grown locally.

This solution combines machine data with company data to manage the supply chain structure, enhance visibility and help business owners make real-time decisions to ensure the perishable items preserve freshness during their journey from the farm to a retail outlet. Sensors, telematics and different telecommunication technologies help obtain data and send to business analytics servers. Such services enable notifications particularly on the threshold of violations.

Read more at: http://www.refrigeratedfrozenfood.com/articles/91526-how-supply-chain-virtualization-with-iot-preserves-quality-freshness-in-frozen-foods