Chewing Gum Consultant

Professional Chewing gum industry meeting point

Natural Gum – Continued 10/02/2022

Filed under: Market & Fairs,New product — Joan Mestres @ 10:48 AM
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A clear trend in recent years has been the use of natural gum base, from sapodilla trees in Mexico. Different companies have launched chewing gums formulated using only natural ingredients. The gum base is one of them but also the flavours and sweeteners are natural. Some of them use the claim “plastic free”.

I have talked in this website about natural gums in the past (The Humble, Endoca, Two Wise Chimps, BenBits, Simply gum, Chewsy,…) , so this is not new to us. I just want to introduce here three companies that were exhibiting in ISM:

TRUE GUM www.truegum.com

FOREST GUM www.forestgum.de

TREE GUM www.treegum.ch

Only the first one has the website in English. “True gum” has been in the market for quite a few years now and can be found in many supermarkets around Europe. Recently, it became part of The Humble group, a Swedish company that specializes in Oral Care products (not only gum) and offers its own natural gum as well.

Recently, we see also the well-known brand STIMOROL, by the giant Mondelez, also offering a natural version. This is available only in Denmark and Switzerland and it comes with 2 different flavours (Spearmint&Eucalyptus and Lemon&Ginger). I find quite interesting that one of the big names in the chewing gum industry has decided to take this way as well. Let’s see how this works in the market and… let’s see if other big names (Mars/Wrigley, Perfetti Van Melle, Lotte,…) decide to follow in the near future.

As this is a clear growing market segment, I wonder if the supply of natural gum base from the trees will be enough to cover the demand!!

Advertisement
 

Daeyoung Foods – Korea 02/03/2015

Filed under: Market & Fairs,New product — Joan Mestres @ 5:35 PM
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

This korean company (www.deayoungfoods.co.kr) might not be one of the big players in the country (Like Lotte, Haiti, Orion,…) but their product is outstanding.

They had a booth in ISM and I had the pleasure to talk to Mr Rhee. They produce other products than gum, but …  their chewing gum portfolio is really interesting!

Most of the products are xylitol based, aligned with what the market demands in that part of the world. But the company gives them a very nice final touch which differentiates them from the competition. See this photo that I took from the “Rainbow gum”. Isn’t it an appealing way to present the dragees? When I see this, the rest of sugarfree gums risk to look too boring.

 

rainbow gum korea

 

 

The range of gums is completed with other “not-so-common” types of gum: Tube gum, gum in cubes (I talked about this type of presentation in my previous post) and also functional gum, with three different products:

“No sleep Gum” containing guaraná

Vitamin Gum, with vitamins A, B, C, D and E

Polyphenol gum, with antioxidant properties

and Aloe Gum which contains, of course, Aloe Vera.

Daeyoung Foods also exports to a number of countries and has been growing in the last years.

 

LOTTE – Korea / Japan 05/04/2013

Filed under: Market & Fairs,New product — Joan Mestres @ 1:53 PM
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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

 

 

 

New products in China and Korea 20/11/2012

Filed under: New product — Joan Mestres @ 2:31 PM
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Wasabi KitKat (Nestlé) or Cheese Chocolate (Meiji-Japan) are only some of the amazing developments that we find in the Far East. You can see them following this link

http://www.confectionerynews.com/Formulation/Asian-innovation-Wasabi-Kit-Kats-and-cheese-chocolate © 2012 – William Reed Business Media SAS

 

But in our field of chewing gum two novelties are being described in the website above: A bubble gum launched by Lotte, in Korea and the appearance of “Stride”, by Mondelez in China.

Both can be considered oddities. The former because bubble gum is usually not the field where the innovation efforts focus, the later because the presence of Mondelez in the huge Chinese market is almost inexistent. Chinese market is (according to Euromonitor 2011) dominated by Wrigley (ca. 40% market share in value), followed at the distance by Orion, Lotte and Perfetti (all within the 3 to 5% bracket). Then various local players have much smaller shares. We will follow very closely how the launching of  the “Stride” brand (already well-known in other countries) develops and if this really represents the disembark of Mondelez in the Chinese gum market.

 

Chewing Gum and Chewy Candy Combination 22/08/2012

Filed under: New product — Joan Mestres @ 4:02 PM
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

The last trend launched into the market in terms of chewing gum format or presentation has been a co-extruded tab consisting on 3 layers of product. Kraft-Cadbury was the first to come with this innovation and named it “Trident Layers”. This is a sort of “sandwich” gum where the top and bottom layers are gum, and the middle layer is chewy candy with a different flavor. Really interesting mix! Then, the same company has launched the same concept under other brands that they own. For instance “Stride” in Japan and “Beldent” in Argentina. Other companies launched a similar product: Perfetti with the well-known “Mentos” brand and also “Vivident”. In this case, this company dared to go for three completely different layers, as you can see in the photo attached, each one with a different color and/or flavour. Recently Lotte, in Japan, joined the trend and launched “Zeus” gum. In this case they used a completely new brand and did not use any existing one (“BlackBlack”, “Xylitol”, “Green Gum”, etc…). “Zeus” gum has a really strong taste (the image on the packaging refers to a storm and lightning), whicb is quite unusual for the Japanese market, which usually prefers mild flavors. Let’s see how it performs in the market.

We will probably see other products in the market that use this innovative concept of mixing gum and chewy candy. And of course, this opens the door to other combinations…

r