Where East meets West: Highlights from FI Istanbul

By Niamh Michail

- Last updated on GMT

A bridge between Europe and Asia, Turkey has a key strategic location for food and beverage manufacturers.
A bridge between Europe and Asia, Turkey has a key strategic location for food and beverage manufacturers.

Related tags Cheese Dietary fiber

FoodNavigator is at Food Ingredients Istanbul, scouting out the latest ingredient trends and developments in the region. Here are some that caught our eye.

Fibrelle

With obesity and type 2 diabetes concerns on the rise in Turkey, Fibrelle is a diabetic-friendly, low GI sweetener made up of prebiotic fibres inulin, oligofructose and polydextrose, and stevia extract Reb-A, which can replace sugar like for like in bakery and beverages, and requires no product reformulation.

Fibrelle has the same functional qualities as sugar and can provide volume, browning, chewiness and viscosity, and has caramelising properties.

Manufactured by Istanbul-based company Kardel Food Marketing, the baking formulation is available in both retail and industrial quantities.

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One tablespoon serving provides 3.6 g of soluble fibre and prebiotic fibres benefit from an authorised health claim in Turkey for improved digestive health.

General manager Oguz Pardun, told FoodNavigator the healthy image was important for the company, which has been supplying 80% of the private hospitals in Turkey with sweeteners for around four years. “It’s not a big part of our sales but it is most important because it shows how it is healthier than the competitors,”​ he said.

Around 80% of the company’s volume sales currently goes to domestic manufacturers but Kardel Food Marketing also supplies to ice-cream and beverage manufacturers in Croatia, Greece and Spain, and has its sights set on expanding its exports to other EU countries, the USA and the Middle East.

Away with acid whey

Dutch supplier Avebe has landed itself an Fi Istanbul innovation award for its Etenia whey binder. The ingredient means fresh cheese and yoghurt makers will no 

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longer see 75% of the milk used for the final product end up as acid whey, a waste product which can cause environmental damage if disposed of improperly.

Added to the milk at the start of the production process, Etenia works by texturising the milk and can be pasteurised, sterilised and homogenised.

With a taste profile that is “quite comparable”,​ an increased yield of 40% and cost savings of up to 30% to be made, market development manager Wouter Berendsen said he expects the ingredient to be well received in Turkey where traditional dairy-based products such as labne, suzme yoghurt or hard cheese are popular.

Etenia can be labelled as starch in both Turkey and the EU, and is industrially available.

Clean label is coming

Indian company Synthite, which supplies natural colours and flavours extracted from botanicals and spices, has been coming to FI Istanbul for

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three years and sees natural colours and flavours as a key area for growth in the country.

It has recently launched Straights, a line of clean-label, oil-soluble paprika and jalapeno flavour and colour extracts which can be labelled as colouring foods.

“We’ve seen more and more demand each year,” ​said senior specialist in business and new product development, George Paul.

"Unlike China which is very cost-sensitive but less concerned with clean label ingredients, or Europe which is very much focused on having clean-label ingredients, Turkey sits somewhere in between and manufacturers have to find a balance,"​ said Paul.

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