Kerry unveils Smart Taste to help brands balance market pressures with consumer demand

Kerry has launched Smart Taste, a new platform designed to help food and beverage manufacturers tackle growing market challenges while keeping taste at the heart of product development.

As consumers demand healthier, more sustainable, and affordable options without compromising on flavour, manufacturers are facing increasing pressure to reformulate and innovate. Smart Taste brings together Kerry’s expertise in taste, nutrition, and functionality to support customers in delivering products that meet evolving market needs.

The company says the platform will provide tailored solutions to help brands manage issues such as sugar and salt reduction, protein fortification, and cost optimisation, while ensuring products remain appealing to consumers.

“In today’s complex food and beverage landscape, great taste alone is no longer enough,” said Leigh Anne Vaughan, VP of strategy & marketing – taste. “Our Smart Taste proprietary solutions directly address our customers’ pain points by optimising flavour profiles in a way that reduces reliance on costly or volatile ingredients, supports cleaner labels, and meets evolving regulations, cost-effectively and sustainably. Most crucially, Smart Taste solutions also retain the great taste expectations of consumers, because at our core, we believe there can be no compromise on taste.”

From supply constraint mitigation to regulatory pressures, Smart Taste empowers brands to confidently protect product taste while addressing ongoing challenges such as:

• Cocoa crisis: Kerry’s cocoa boosters enable up to 50% cocoa reduction while preserving indulgent taste, delivering up to 40% cost savings and reducing carbon emissions by up to 48%.
• Sugar reduction: Kerry’s Tastesense Sweetness allows for up to 100% sugar reduction while rebuilding mouthfeel, enhancing sweetness perception and masking off-notes – ensuring regulatory compliance and consumer satisfaction in reduced sugar and sugar-free products.

“We’re responding to an unprecedented level of market uncertainty that affects every stage of the production process – from raw material supply, to managing the cost of delivering the final product to consumers,” said John Savage, president and CEO of taste.

“At the heart of Smart Taste is the deep integration of advanced scientific processes that go far beyond traditional flavour creation. It combines Kerry’s expertise in flavour development with broader capabilities in food science and processing – including strategic investments in technologies like bio-fermentation and AI. These investments continually add new dimensions to the Smart Taste offering, enabling Kerry to push the boundaries of innovation and rapidly solve taste challenges that extend well beyond delivering great taste alone”.

Kerry’s move reflects the wider industry trend of balancing health, sustainability, and affordability with the uncompromising importance of taste in food and beverage innovation.