Indonesian ingredients company Foodex Ingredients develops taste solutions for food manufacturers across categories including snacks, instant noodles, beverages, processed meat and foodservice.
The company sees snacks as a key growth area, with flavour innovation central to its approach.
Snacking is in our DNA
Kusuma believes that snacking will always be popular because it has always been a part of our lives, even at the early stages.
“When we are very small, we always get snacks, even when we are babies. It is ingrained in us to snack. Snacking has been in our DNA since we were born, whether you like it or not,” he said.
Kusuma takes a broad view of the category, including drinks and frozen desserts as snack occasions.
“Ice cream is a snack. Juice is also a snack,” Kusuma said.
For Foodex, the breadth of the snack category also creates opportunities for food manufacturers to experiment with different flavours and formats.
Flavour innovation over health positioning
Foodex focuses on flavour innovation to drive appeal, rather than making health the primary selling point.
“Right now, we are not really focusing on the health angle. We are focusing more on taste,” Kusuma said.
“However, we do focus on natural ingredients, such as natural colours and extracts. It is a different type of health positioning.”
He explained that this business angle is driven by a very basic need: People want something delicious at the end of the day. For Kusuma, healthier positioning has limited value if a product fails to deliver the flavour and enjoyment consumers expect.
“Sometimes people say, ‘I want to be healthy’. But very often, they’d also say they are going to have a ‘cheat day’. This is because they crave something good,” said Kusuma.
That philosophy is reflected in Foodex’s approach to flavour development, including its recent work with ube, matcha and peach.
Ube, matcha, and peach – the trending flavours
As Foodex explores new flavour combinations, it observed that consumer interest in matcha and ube is growing across markets.
It launched its ube matcha earlier this year, following the longer-established popularity of matcha drinks.
It has also introduced matcha peach, which Kusuma said is the firm’s newest flavour.
“Ube is everywhere. I was in Bangkok and Shanghai, and ube is big there. Even in Singapore, although it is not as widespread, ube is gaining traction. I think ube is the next big thing after Dubai chocolate,” said Kusuma.
He added that Foodex is positioning the two flavours around different taste preferences: ube for a richer, creamier profile, and peach for something lighter and more refreshing, particularly in tropical markets such as Indonesia.
The company is also using ceremonial matcha and moving beyond the traditional jasmine tea base to create a different flavour combination.
“Previously, when we talked about tea-based beverages, the base was always jasmine. We wanted to offer something with a different base, and ceremonial matcha looked like a good option that goes well with peach,” said Kusuma.
Matcha is popular right now because it offers health benefits with the potential for versatile pairings.
Alongside flavour, Kusuma said texture is another important consideration in snack development.
Sweet, spicy, crunchy shape snack innovation
The company works across several food categories, including instant noodles, snacks, beverages, processed meat and foodservice. He notes that Indonesian foods hit the sweet spot with the combination of sweet, spicy, and crunchy.
“In Indonesia, people like sweet, spicy and crunchy. Those are the three things we are always focusing on. It is the same across Southeast Asia, although some markets in thew region also like sour flavours,” Kusuma said.
Kusuma’s observations also reflect a wider flavour trend as reported in “Spicy, Snack, and Sweet Flavor Innovations: Global Market Overview” by Innova Market Insights. It reported that sweet-and-spicy combinations are gaining ground in snacks and sweets, with consumers showing interest in novel and culturally rooted flavour combinations.
For ingredient suppliers, this creates an interesting tension: familiar flavour profiles can make new products easier to accept, while combinations such as sweet-spicy or matcha-fruit give manufacturers a way to differentiate products without moving too far from recognisable tastes.
Market expansion
Foodex is expanding its food solutions into Bangladesh, Vietnam and the Philippines. It also exports to parts of Europe and Australia but is focused on Asia for now.
“Our focus is essentially Asia because Europe is looking for very natural products. Under Indonesian regulations, we cannot export beef or chicken extracts — essentially meat products — in the same way. We export plant-based products such as shallots, garlic and red onions,” said Kusuma.
Although health is not currently Foodex’s primary focus, Kusuma sees it as a growing opportunity for the company.
Looking ahead, Kusuma said Foodex expects health to become more important as demand grows for healthier versions of familiar categories such as snacks and instant noodles — while taste remains central to product development.
