Euromonitor issues passport to ingredients consumption data

The market analyst has previously supplied information on consumer products sold at retail, including retail market values for product categories. But its new system, called Passport: Ingredients, builds in this intelligence to give companies an insight into precisely how ingredients are being used in products around the world, and in what volumes. The global sales volume data is applied to actual recipes of leading brands, resulting in "uniquely detailed ingredient tonnages by category based on actual consumption".​ For instance, world volume consumption of high intensity sweeteners is valued at 70,237 tonnes in 2006, up 3.7 per cent from the previous year. Ingredients manager John Madden told FoodNavigator.com that the system sprung out of the uses to which Euromonitor's ingredients clients have put the retail data to in the past. The company was aware that clients have applied the data to their own business area to come up with an estimate for usage volume. Madden said that there was "a clear gap in the market",​ and that no individual ingredients firm could take on such a comprehensive project. The difference between this and other ingredients industry information sources is that the core angle is consumption, rather than production. For instance, it may be known that 80 per cent of emulsifiers are made in China, but that does not say anything about market drivers or who an ingredients firm's clients should be. Now, however, they are able to "map out by country and category the way they are consumed".​ Savvy marketing has meant that companies are increasingly looking to consumers for an understanding of what will make them spend more. And very often, manufacturers look to ingredients suppliers to develop products to meet their needs. Moreover, it is often down to ingredients firms to create demand for their wares by communicate the benefits to consumers - who in turn make demands of retailers and manufacturers. Passport: Ingredients is not intended as a competitor or replacement for new product launch systems, since new ingredients will need to be at critical mass before they are included. The system covers the 400 most useful ingredients across 600 product categories, out of the many thousands that are available to formulators. Madden said that the system will "challenge some industry wisdom",​ since a lot of the current knowledge is based on gut feel and estimates. Euromonitor is aiming to quantify that wisdom, and expects that the system will evolve as a collaboration, and with the addition of information on new ingredients. The system is online and subscription-based, and clients can sign up for data relevant to their particular market area.