Chewing Gum Consultant

Professional Chewing gum industry meeting point

JAKE – Spain 09/04/2013

Filed under: Market & Fairs — Joan Mestres @ 4:31 PM
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JAKE SA is located in the Murcia region, South East of Spain. It was founded in 1976 and owned nowadays by Mr Emilio Vicente. It employs over 100 people. You can learn more in their website:  www.jakesa.com

They produce many types of confectionery: Hard and soft candy, jellies, licorice and… of course, gum! They focus on kids products, around the concept of fun. They also stress the fact that many of their products are Gluten free.

Within the gum segment they are experts in balls (hollow or filled), melons, bottles and other round shapes. JAKE has also lollipop filled with gum. Some of the brands are FRUTI SPLASH (liquid filled balls presented in individual flow pack), SUPER GUM (lollipop with gum), BLUE/RED/GREEN EXPLOSION (filled balls which paint the tongue with color). The novelty of this last ISM was the brand MEGATRON which includes both a lollipop and a super sour ball presented in individual flow pack.

You can find the full catalogue clicking here

I thank Mr Antonio López for his time and explanations during ISM.

detalle-megtrón

 

Functional Gum in Mexico 08/04/2013

Filed under: Market & Fairs — Joan Mestres @ 3:15 PM
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More news about functional gum being published by http://www.confectionery news.com

Some days ago the focus was Holland and today is on Mexico.

In these two countries, like in many others, the growth of chewing gum is expected to be higher than the growth in other confectionery fields. and the main driver for that is the potential functionality that a chewing gum can contain. Of course the health claim is a key aspect in many markets and an issue that consumers value more and more. Then, of course, becomes a major issue for producers of chewing gums (and almost any other food product, I’d say).

The article also mentions that fruit flavours are the most popular in that country and gives some figures from Euromonitor about the market shares (with mention to one of the companies that I described some days ago: PISSA)

Again, good article from Oliver Nieburg of Confectionerynews.com!

Here is the link:

Functional gum in Mexico

 

LOTTE – Korea / Japan 05/04/2013

Filed under: Market & Fairs,New product — Joan Mestres @ 1:53 PM
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Today’s turn for one of the big names in the chewing gum industry: LOTTE

This huge group has even an entry in Wikipedia! They have many branches in different industries (electronics, tourism, publishing, building, finance, retail, …) but chewing gum was in the origin of the company back in 1948. Other food products in their range are: Drinks, Fast Food and Ice creams.

Lotte is producing chewing gum in many different factories, most of them in Asia, but I’d like to focus here on the new products presented last ISM by their headquarters:

Lotte Korea presented “Tri VIEW”. This is a tab (or ministick) with three different layers (this format is very trendy now in the market). The top and bottom layers are chewing gum whilst the middle layer is chewy candy. This allows for great flavour combinations, not only in terms of taste but also in terms of impact and lasting. I attach a photo taken with my iPhone (so I apologize for the “sub-optimal” quality!)

IMG_1918

Lotte Japan introduced two products. I discussed on a previous post about “ZEUS” (28th Aug 2012). This is also a three layer tab (or ministick) with the same concept as Tri VIEW and some others (discussed in the post I mentioned). ZEUS GUM comes in different flavors with “sexy” names: Aurora curtain, Snow storm, Thunder spark, Rain shower,…

Another product is “ENGINE”, which comes in cubic format with a slight coating and presented in a flip top box. There are different versions of the product, such as X-TRA SPEED, X-TRA WILD and X-TRA BURST and the product contains caffeine and guarana, so fall perfectly into the category of functional gum. The cubic presentation is also interesting because it is not very common in the market.

 

lotte xtra speedlotte engine open

 

zeus 2zeus 3zeus 4

 

 

 

Health claims in European chewing gums 04/04/2013

Filed under: Market & Fairs,Research — Joan Mestres @ 5:45 PM
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Today I send you the link to an article about the Health claims that are approved for a chewing gum by the European Union. The article mentions the mature Dutch market and says that functional claims are the way to keep a higher growth for the chewing gum compared to other confectionery products, but these functional chewing gums must keep a reasonable price.

It mentions the claims approved by EU, which include the use of ingredients such as carbamide, fluoride and xylitol.

Confectionery News functional Gum

 

FLEER – Spain 03/04/2013

Filed under: Market & Fairs,New product — Joan Mestres @ 6:15 PM
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The company FLEER ESPAÑOLA SA is a joint venture between Tootsie Roll and the Torrents family.

Dr Torrents (a pharmacist) entered the world of chewing gum back in 1960 when he developed a gum against motion sickness. You can read the history and more in their web-site www.fleer.es

The company is based near Barcelona and employs about 90 people. I thank Mr José Ramon Navarro for his time and explanation during ISM.

In fact, FLEER has very innovative and interesting products. Their main brand is CLIX (sugarfree gum  in dragee and tab presentation). New in ISM was the “JOYSTICK”, a stick in individual flow pack which comes under the CLIX brand umbrella. This presentation is not very common, so worth checking. Other branches of the CLIX brand are “CLIX 3D” or “6 CLIX STICK GUM” (a sleeve with 6 sticks inside).

Other brands are DUBLOOM (sugared bubble gum filled with liquid) and DUBU (melons and other shapes. I always found very nice the one that comes with the shape of a bear!). Of course, we also find the famous “DUBBLE BUBBLE”, a heritage from the original FLEER, in USA.

3D-Clix-Joystick-Menta-Azul_thumb                                               clix3d                                                    dubloom

 

LUTTI – France 02/04/2013

Filed under: Market & Fairs,New product — Joan Mestres @ 12:30 PM
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Today a French company: LUTTI. This company is specialist in other products than gum. They make hard and soft candy, jellies, marshmallow and chocolate. They employ about 500 people and have two factory locations, one in France (near Lille) and one in Belgium. Nowadays it is owned by KATJES, a German company, since 2009. LUTTI was founded in 1889 (!) so it is probably one of the oldest companies that I comment in this web.

Even if chewing gum might not be the core business of Lutti, they have some very special and interesting products: Gum in tube, roll up (tape gum) and spaghetti gum. All of them are bubble gum type and really out of the most common cut & wrap or hollow balls (which are the most common presentations for bubble gum). This is what makes LUTTI so special.

The novelties in ISM were a tube gum (branded as “TUBBLE COLOR”) that paints the tongue of the user in blue. Honestly, I’ve seen in the past bubble gums that leave a blue tongue, but not recently! So, once more, LUTTI adventures into a field which is outside the standard.

They also launched “BUBBLE PARTY”, which is an assortment of products.

I thank Mme Sylvie Foucart for her time and explanations during the Fair

Tubble ColorBUBBLE-PARTY

 

PISSA – Mexico 27/03/2013

Filed under: Market & Fairs,New product — Joan Mestres @ 2:19 PM
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The name of this company, PISSA, stands for Productos Industrializados del Saltillo, SA. It is located in the city of Saltillo, north of Mexico. The company is partly owned by Pepsico. They are specialists on compressed dextrose products (world leader in this field, they claim) but they also make excellent chewing and bubble gum products, mainly for third parties (private label). You see it in their website: www.pissacorp.com

I saw three very interesting products this past ISM. All of them non-common gums, which show the innovation and spirit of the company. Let’s see if I can describe them (with the help of some pictures that I took with my iPhone, so excuse the quality…)

– DUO POP is a tabletted dextrose lollipop. This is already a bit exceptional in itself, but the interesting feature is that it contains pieces of chewing gum embedded in the dextrose. One can see the particles because they have different color.

IMG_1892

 

– GUM ART: It is not just a product, but a concept in itself. Mr Carlos Palomino (thanks for your time!) explained the concept “Fun to play, easy to share”. So it this case we have a sheet of gum (16 gram!) with a design painted on it. This design can be adapted to licenses. Then we have a pencil filled with syrup, in such a way that the child can “paint” the gum layer with the syrup of the pen. Then can be eaten or shared with other friends. The perception resembles the feeling of a syrup filled bubble gum (because we have a liquid and a gum as well) but with the characteristic that it can be repeated several times with the same item.

IMG_1891

 

– TAPE GUM: This format of gum is not strange but it is not extremely common in the market. A few companies produce it. In this case PISSA differentiates because of the packaging. They use a themoformed blister that helps deliver the tape gum as we wish.

img03b

So, in summary, three very interesting products developed by PISSA.

Finally I wanted to mention as well a product that I did not see in their stand in ISM but I saw when I visited their facilities some time ago and that I found in their website. It is a gum with a printed design on top of it. This makes it quite particular as well. Here is a photo from the website (same as the one above for the tape gum) so copyrighted:

img10c

 

Beneo 25/03/2013

Filed under: Market & Fairs,New product — Joan Mestres @ 4:53 PM
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Today I will leave the presentation of chewing gum producers in ISM and talk a bit about a supplier.  There were a few suppliers presenting there, so I will discuss about their ingredients as well.

Today is time for BENEO. The group has many branches and deals with sugar beet, rice and wheat products. It is itself a branch of the big german Südzucker group and probably the part of Beneo which comes closer to the chewing gum field is Beneo-Palatinit (Others are Beneo-Orafti, Beneo-Remy, Beneo-BioBasedChemicals and Beneo-Animal Nutrition). The company has an excellent application laboratory where they can prepare and analyize samples of many confectionery products.

This company produces two main groups of products: Isomalt and Palatinose.

Isomalt includes a family of different grades. It can used as bulk swetener (Isomalt ST) in sugarfree gum, but mainly as coating agent (Isomalt GS) for the chewing gum pillows. It has other applications such as tabletting (Isomalt DC) and chocolate production (Isomalt LM).

Recent studies conducted by the company show, for instance, that isomalt can replace the Mannitol in the chewing gum formulation. Many producers use 5% of Mannitol in the formulation. The main objective of this, is to act as anticrystallizing agent for the main bulk sweetener (usually sorbitol).

See more in this link

Palatinose is a trade name for the ingredient Palatinose, a sugar substitute which is “the only low glycemic carbohydrate providing longer lasting energy in the form of glucose” and it has also its application as sweetener in chewing gum.

In ISM the company presented a chewing gum which includes Palatinose and Stevia as sweeteners and a candy with Isomalt and Stevia. This follows the trend noticed in the market of increased use of Stevia as intensive sweetener. I mentioned about this in previous postings.

Let me reproduce here a text supplied by the company itself discussing about one of my passions: “Innovative applications”. In this case about tabletted gum, which is interesting in itself:

“One of the most interesting uses of the multi-layer compressed gum technology is Procter and Gamble’s Wick Blau Icebergs Sugar Free Chewing Gum.  Launched late in 2008 in Germany, the chewing gum features a white layer of peppermint, with a special chewing gum layer.  Containing ISOMALT, this sugar free mint product has been designed to have two effects; to provide an immediate refreshing feeling, as well as prolonging the product’s overall taste with the chewing gum.  A more recent product brought to market featuring a similar two-layered mint/gum approach is Vivident’s Cool Shock Two-Layer Chewing Gum.  This strawberry flavoured gum contains no added sugar, thanks to the inclusion of ISOMALT, and has been reformulated into trianglular-shaped tablets for marketing impact.”

In the links below you can find more about the company and products:

www.beneo-group.com

www.beneo.com

www.beneonews.com

I thank Ms Ingrid Willibald-Ettle for her time and explanations during ISM.

 

LTK TRADING – Turkey 20/03/2013

Filed under: Market & Fairs,New product — Joan Mestres @ 1:19 PM
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More about Turkish chewing gum producers!

Today LKT Trading, part of the huge Latek Holding, which contains many companies in many different fields (really impressive). But the one which is of our interest is the chewing gum branch of this Holding, which includes 2 factories in Istanbul area.

It has about 20 years experience and 300 employees. The owner is Mr Zekeriye Mete. You can read more in www.latekholding.com or www.ltktrading.com

The company has two main brands: “Happy Gum”, which is the “chewing gum part” and consists of dragees and sticks presented in different packagings (plastic bottles, flip top boxes….), and “Gum Babol” which is the “bubble gum part” and has cut & wrap products in multipack presentation. The new launch for ISM was a HAPPY GUM sugar free presented in an envelop and with 6 different flavors.

According to Euromonitor, Sugarfree chewing gum accounts for 72% in volume of the total gum sold in Turkey in 2011. The trend, of course is for positive growth of this segment,a s products become more and more sophisticated.

I thank Mr Cem Erman for his time and explanations during the fair.

 

SAADET – Turkey 19/03/2013

Filed under: Market & Fairs,New product — Joan Mestres @ 3:49 PM
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Let’s continue with Turkish companies and let me introduce today SAADET Confectionery Co.

This company was founded in 1996, has 4 factories in Istanbul and about 1000 employees. It is owned by Mr Subet. Its web site is www.saadet.com.tr

You will see that they produce not only chewing gum, but also jellies, marshmallow, licorice and others.

In terms of chewing gum the main brands are : NAZAR (sugafree ministick), OCEAN (dragees and sticks), PUNTO (bubble cut & wrap) and MISKET (ball). So they cover a very good range of products both chewing and bubble, both sugared and sugarfree, both coated and uncoated. There are also other brands that you can find in their website.

The big launch in ISM was NAZAR Istanbul, which is a double layer chewing gum ministick, presented in a nice envelope pack. Of course, mastic flavor is present in the products from Saadet! I attach a picture of this.

I thank Mr Suat Ecran for his time and explanations at his booth.

Nazar Saadet