The Future Of Taste In APAC
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2020

The APFI team speaks to Avinash Lal, Market Research & Consumer Insights Director APMEA from Kerry, on the company’s innovative and insightful new tool: Taste Charts.
A Brief Introduction To Taste Charts
The Asia Pacific Kerry Taste Charts 2020 are a future-focused collaborative effort. Our predictions date back a decade and consider flavours and ingredients that are here to stay (which we dub Mainstream and Key), as well as flavours and ingredients set to create ripples in the industry (which we dub Up & Coming and Emerging). Experts from Kerry’s marketing insights team, research and development scientists as well as trained mixologists and culinary experts weigh in across channels and end-use markets to determine today’s trending tastes and anticipate taste trends for the future.
By reviewing and analysing point of sale data, product launches, menu penetration, customer surveys and Kerry’s proprietary predictive tools as primary sources of data, our experts have assembled an informed view of emerging trends shaping the taste industry across sweet, savoury and beverage. Brands can use these insights to ensure the delivery of new and innovative products that appeal to consumers in the markets they serve.
Based on the Taste Charts, what trends are we seeing for new beverage launches in APAC?
Firstly, we are seeing a lot of functional ingredients and exotic flavours making their way into our taste charts in the last three years. These include flavours like osmanthusand banana blossom. Functional ingredients like moringa, purple rice, kale, ginseng have seen strong growth in the last few years. Naturally beneficial drinks like kombucha are also trending. Also, we see an evolution in the lifecycle for certain ingredients. For example, matcha is a key ingredient in sweet but is now visible in beverages (water & cold) as an up and coming flavour. We are also seeing cross-overs across categories—kale is up & coming in both salty snacks and beverages (water & cold).
- How can the Taste Charts be leveraged or interpreted to create new or innovative flavours or refresh existing ones?
- What are Kerry’s predictions for taste solutions in the new decade?
We will see trends along:
1) Health & wellness—natural ingredients to replace ingredients like sugar; ingredients and flavours with an associated wellness or health benefit
2) Experiences—more exotic flavours, flavour fusions, appealing to senses other than just taste, i.e. visual like pea tea, inspired by other categories
3) Convenience—with increasingly hectic lifestyles, meals on the go and meal replacements will become a norm. There will be a demand for ingredients that provide the required micro-nutrients.
Check these articles out:
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Bunge Loders Croklaan Introduces Betapol Plus: The Next Generation OPO For Infant Milk Formula
Plant-Based Foods Gaining Global Currency
Novozymes Launches Online Calculator To Help Dairies Develop Products With Less Sugar
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