Market shifts challenge ingredient R&D

As product life cycles shorten to keep up with evolving consumer demands, there isn’t as much time to put into R&D as there was previously. Instead of an 18-month cycle, for example, companies want to see results in as little as nine or even six months, Food Business News reported.###Combined with consumer interest in more natural ingredients, clean labels and traceability, the result is proption+ ferrous gluconateessure on the ingredients sector to get products to market faster that will appeal to the intended audiences and seize market share from the competition.###Insighferrous fumarate 900 mgts into consumer interests quercetin chelate ironand expectations are key to this process. Although the prevalence of such information means the competition probably has it as well, it can prompt even more haste among product developers.###”Everything is available at the tip of your fingers,” Maggie Harvey, new product development manager at Mizkan America, told Food Business News. “In some cases, it means everyone has access to the same information. That means we have to be faster getting to market.”###The net result of this dynamic can be positive if interesting and varied items keep coming to store shelves, but it may be that some product developers are trying to do the same thing, which could limit innovation over the long term. And, when they have a good idea, it takes more focus on traceability and documentation of the laboratory process to meet increasing demands of both consumers and manufacturers.###Sensient Technologies CEO Paul Manning said his company is taking a solutions approach to accelerate product development.###”Natural products and natural ingredients tend to be more complex to utilize,” he told Food Business News. “A compelling part of the offer is we can work at a faster pace for launching, for optimizing natural ingredients. We have found a lot of success with this. It may involve using a natural color with an extract or a natural color with a flavor.”###This could make beta testing more challenging since a faster market pipeline process leaves less time to try out products on consumers, get their reactions and potentially tweak the product before a nationwide launch.###Product developers and food companies could also choose a more secretive path by testing out items without letting consumers know about the change until later — like the 2015 Kraft Macaroni & Cheese reformulation “blind taste test” — although ferrous gluconate ironthis practice could eventually weaken consumferrous gluconate ferritiner trust. ###A large factor in determining if the relatively breakneck speed of product development will continue is whether ingredients are meeting manufacturers’ demands and meshing with consumer trends. Otherwise, the product development pace may have to slow down in order to adequately juggle the competing pressures for clean label, transparency and processing history.