Quality Raw Materials and Technology for
Authentic and Natural Apple and Citrus
Flavors
Naturalness is the strongest trend in the food and beverage sector, resulting in stronger
demand for natural and fruit-derived flavors.
Roman della Peruta, Döhler
Editor’s note: The natural flavors market could be worth
$5 billion by 2017, according to a recent report.a
“The global market for natural flavors in terms of revenue
was estimated to be worth around $3,546.3 million in 2011,
and is expected to reach $5,078.0 million by 2017, growing
at the CAGR of 6.2% from 2012 to 2017,” the report notes.
“Europe is the largest market. The demand for natural fla-
vors is expected to rise in North America due to an increase
in regulations banning artificial flavors.”
This growth in the market, according to the report’s
authors, is driven by worldwide regulatory pressure on
the flavors used in food production, healthy perception of
natural flavors by consumers, new technologies that are
making natural flavors more cost-effective, and merger and
acquisition activity in the service of increased capacities
and capabilities.
Here, author Roman della Peruta discusses the technical
and sensory potential of this booming category.
The move toward naturalness is the strongest trend in the food and beverage sector, resulting in stronger demand for natural and fruit-derived flavors. Among the best
natural flavors are products isolated solely from the botanically
authentic fruit or plant, so-called FTNF/FTNJ/FTNS (from the
named fruit/juice/source) flavors. These natural fruit extracts
comprise water phases/essences, flavor fractions, isolates and
extracts of the individual fruits, plants and sources.
A Range of Technologies
Ingredients derived from natural sources are always a challenge
in terms of consistent qualities. Flavor components can vary from
harvest to harvest. To guarantee consistent FTNF/FTNJ/FTNS
flavors and compositional flavors, state-of-the art separation
technologies are used. Otherwise, much flavor gets lost to solid
material during its separation from juice, followed by pressing
or centrifuging.
Vacuum distillation is used for sophisticated separation
tasks at gentle temperatures, producing, e.g., water phases and
essential oils. Liquid-liquid extraction allows for the extraction
of valuable components of essential oils at low temperatures. In
solid-phase extraction (chromatography), appropriate stationary
phases are used to process the different raw materials in order
to produce final isolates and flavors with specific characteristics.
Molecular distillation employs a special setup of a condensing
system, which results in an efficient distillation of high-boiling
components at very low pressures and temperatures.
These techniques isolate the different flavor components, which
are later used to formulate tailor-made “reproducible” flavors.
In addition to these separation technologies, global access
to high-quality fruit, plant and vegetable raw materials is fundamental for the production of premium natural flavors, and
to guarantee authentic taste profiles. This is especially true
for the most popular fruits, such as citrus and apple, from
which not only tailor-made flavors can be extracted, but also a
From sweet to sour, from green to ripe,
the taste nuances of citrus fruits are more
diverse than those of almost any other fruit.
To guarantee consistent FTNF/FTNJ/FTNS flavors and compositional flavors, state-of-the-art separation technologies are used.
a“Global Natural Colors and Flavors Market by Types, Applications and
Geography: Forecasts up to 2017”; www.reportlinker.com
