Stevia missing a trick in confectionery
With ongoing concerns about health and the reduction of sugar in the diet, the sugar-free confectionery market should be booming. This is particularly in the face of ongoing technical developments that have improved sensory properties and the appearance of new sweeteners and other ingredients with a more natural image. Yet sugar-free lines accounted for less than 7% of global confectionery launches recorded by Innova Market Insights in 2014, which is a similar penetration level to that in 2013.
There are significant differences between product types, however, with sugar-free launches representing just 1% of chocolate confectionery introductions, rising to 7.5% in sugar confectionery and to over 63% in chewing gum. Even within the very diverse sugar confectionery market, penetration varies by type of product, with sugar-free launches focused particularly in the hard candy market, where they accounted for nearly one fifth of introductions.
In combining calorie, particularly sugar, reduction with naturalness, the spreading regulatory approval for stevia sweeteners in markets such as the US, Australia and the EU has caused something of a revolution in sweetener use across a range of food and drinks markets, although this has had only limited effect in confectionery to date. Just over 1% of confectionery launches in 2014 featured stevia as an ingredient, which was a similar level to that in food and drinks as a whole, but behind the levels of use in soft drinks and tabletop sweeteners, for example.
“Formulation problems and the bitter after taste of stevia are felt to have held back product activity in some instances,” says Lu Ann Williams, director of innovation at Innova Market Insights. “But some sectors have found this less of an issue, particularly liqourice sweets and medicated confectionery, and improved formulations are now being introduced to allow more products in other areas.”
Williams adds, “The confectionery industry has been perhaps slower to take on stevia sweeteners than originally forecast, and it remains to be seen how take up will develop over the next few years.”
