In addition to supplying cocoa, espresso, dairy and spices, the corporate (the brand new working group born out of Olam) is the primary provider of all seven main nuts and the world’s largest impartial hazelnut provider. Such is its scope, it claims to provide sufficient hazelnuts to make 673 million jars of hazelnut unfold yearly.
From ofi’s sourcing and processing operations in Turkey (which accounts for almost three-quarters of world manufacturing) its hazelnuts are exported everywhere in the world as an ingredient in numerous candy and savoury merchandise from chocolate and pralines, to spreads and oils. Doing so requires an in depth vary of nuts and flavours in custom-made codecs (together with pure, blanched, sliced, diced, slivered, roasted, natural, paste and oil) to accommodate fashionable shopper preferences.
The Singapore-based firm is due to this fact assured it’s effectively positioned to capitalise on the ‘well being halo’ loved by nuts amongst finish shoppers due to excessive quantities of unsaturated fat, fibre, calcium, iron potassium and protein. Nuts may also help entrance of pack labelling too. Vitamin-based schemes resembling Nutri-Rating think about nuts as having a optimistic influence on the general dietary rating. There’s additionally a possibility to make use of them in savoury snacks within the UK, on account of their exemption from the nation’s HFSS regulation.
Heath and indulgence
Crucially, although, nuts can present each well being and indulgence, and the significance of the hazelnut is linked to chocolate and confectionery, the place it dominates the class and is the highest flavour for launches in Europe. Ofi is busy unleashing sensory and useful advantages to new or current merchandise. It sees traditional mixtures like chocolate and hazelnut evolving to incorporate further flavour notes, like salt or spice. Consider a bar with scorching honey coated hazelnuts, for instance.
Thrilling as such a innovation is, three quarters of hazelnut manufacturing is for the chocolate class, stated Swaroop Joshi, ofi Vice President, Gross sales and Advertising and marketing. Classes like ice cream, muesli, protein powder, nut milks are all ‘slowly rising’ he stated “however in the present day the business continues to be depending on the chocolate confectionary consumption”.
Creating market development key
The corporate has noticed regular annual hazelnut consumption development of round 4-5% development in the previous few years. The corporate is now eager to take advantage of the large development potential it sees within the chocolate class in growing markets. “I come from India myself and the primary time I noticed a hazelnut was after I was in mid 20s,” revealed Joshi. “I did not know there was one thing referred to as a hazelnut which is made right into a paste and added to chocolate unfold.”
He expects development in chocolate and hazelnut consumption to speed up as shoppers in growing markets uncover a style for it. Europeans sometimes eat 6-7 kilos of chocolate a yr, he claimed. In China, that quantity is presently simply 100 grammes. “In markets like China, India, Brazil, Pakistan – that’s the place the expansion will come.”
There additionally development potential for hazelnuts within the snacking class, he stated. In Turkey, for instance, it’s common to see salted or caramel hazelnut eaten as a snack.
“Throughout a lot of the globe you have not seen hazels on the snack shelf together with cashews and peanuts and almonds,” he famous. “We consider that is an unexplored market and we try to make some inroads into that to see if that may be explored higher.”
