Immunity Heroes

2020 was the year of change, forced upon the world thanks to a global pandemic that made everyone stop for a short while and then re-adjust once lockdowns were lifted. The use of face masks and hand sanitiser became the norm, not to mention wellbeing of our friends, family and neighbours.

The importance of a strong and healthy immune system has become an increasing priority for many, so brands that react the quickest to this emerging trend will reign supreme in 2021 and beyond.

Hear how our innovative approach with a Big 4 UK Supermarket allowed us to respond in record breaking time to deliver an immunity boosting product for an emerging audience, whilst paving the way for a range of food and beverage immunity heroes, via our ingredients technology.

Our Immunity Heroes story
Our mission is to help customers grow their businesses through product innovation. Half the time we do this when businesses come to us with a product challenge and the other half we go to customers with solutions.

Our story begins back in June 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. One of our leading dressings, condiments and marinades contract manafacturers asked if we could help them create an immunity boosting product for one of the Big 4 UK Supermarkets.

The supermarket wanted to create a salad dressing for vegan customers who lacked Vitamin B12 & D3, iron etc… because of their day-to-day diet. Our challenge was to create a product that improved bone, heart and brain health, whilst increasing energy levels and reducing tiredness without compromising texture and taste.

One for our innovation team
Our innovation team instantly set up a collaboration lab and invited our client and our micronutrient premix principal to the table to collectively find a solution. The first thing we needed to unearth was the challenges and limitations:

1. To ensure active levels of micronutrients are maintained and meet label decloration throughout shelf life
2. Stability in low PH and following exposure to heat treatment
3. Meet the supermarkets health claims of the final product

Now that we had unearthed the barriers, it was time for our innovation team to get creative. Our technical expertise meant that we could identify low acid and heat-treated resistant ingredients and calculate how much we’d need of each to account for micronutrient degradation due to production processes.

Once we’d created the perfect solution, we went back to the wider team so they could carry out accelerated shelf-life testing to quantify the products health claims.

TESTING CONFIRMED THE PRODUCT DELIVERED A 15% RI OF VITAMIN C,D,E, ZINC AND SELENIUM*

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The testing results and end product were then presented back to the supermarket. They approved our product and rolled out a Mango & Chilli, Beetroot & Cumin and Red Pepper flavour variants, all fortified with micronutrients.

Delivering the end product
Our innovative and collaborative approach allowed our customer to create a new product for an emerging market in just 10 weeks (brief to Nutricol in mid-June – final product delivered to client 1st Sept), with the supermarket product in store by Jan 2021.

Immunity products for every brand
Now that we have the DNA for our immunity product, we can customise solutions for a wide variety of brands and categories without compromising the original product. From breads, margarines & spreads, BBQ sauces, mayonnaise, ketchup, yeast spreads, peanut butters & jams, baked beans, sweets, yoghurts, pet foods, instant coffee & gravy, soft beverages – RTD & concentrates.