There’s real excitement around plant-based foods at the moment – and rightly so. As consumer concern for health, animal welfare and the sustainability of our planet increases, the market for meat and dairy alternatives continues to grow.

The potential is great but speed to market is now critical, as is delivering products with the texture and flavour to satisfy discerning flexitarians.

This is where Andina Ingham can help.  We work in partnership with Hydrosol GmbH, a global leader in the development of texturising and stabilising systems for plant-based alternatives.  Since 2014, Hydrosol has been using its extensive application technology and knowledge of plant proteins to focus on improving the texture, bite and flavour of alternative meat and dairy products. Indeed, Hydrosol has played a key part in the development of many of the innovative and well-known plant-based products currently on the market.

Drawing on Hydrosols’ range of latest generation plant based stabilising and texturising systems, Andina Ingham’s technical experts work closely with our customers to find quick and cost effective solutions to their texture problems.

For example:

• Andina Ingham has helped a successful sausage manufacturer move quickly into the meat free sector by working closely with them (including attending on-site factory trials) to improve the texture and “sliceability” of their vegan products. This customer is now increasing production and with our continued technical support is introducing a number of new lines.
• We helped a producer of non-dairy ingredients launch what is now among the top selling lines in the dairy alternative sector.  We worked with our partner Hydrosol to formulate a customised range of vegan stabilisers that worked for our customer’s products.  This involved several visits to Hydrosol’s state-of-the-art application based pilot plant in Germany where recipes were tested knowing that we could scale up to production trials with confidence.
• Our technical team is working with working several customers to develop plant based salamis (including pepperonis) for use in pizza and sandwich production.
• We are trialling a very impressive vegan bacon rasher at blue chip European companies
• We have successfully developed meat free “sausage meat” at the request of a large bakery chain, to use in their vegan sausage rolls

On 19th-20th November, Andina Ingham is exhibiting at Food Matters Live at stand B55.  Here, we will present a selection of meat and dairy alternatives that have been made using Hydrosol’s latest generation stabilising and texturizing solutions.  Come and talk to one of our experts and try our vegan burger patties, salami or sausage roll.  We will also be offering samples of vegan cottage cheese, cream cheese and feta.