Tate & Lyle’s ingredients solutions for healthier products

Shahid Hafeez Khan, Tate & Lyle’s Application and Technical Support Manager for Pakistan and Iran.

Tate & Lyle’s ingredients solutions for healthier and enhanced products

In an exclusive interview with Insight Food Technology, Shahid Hafeez Khan, Tate & Lyle’s Application and Technical Support Manager for Pakistan and Iran speaks about the core competencies of Tate & Lyle and the latest ingredients solutions for healthier food and beverages.

Please talk to us about your role in the company and what are your key responsibilities?

I am primarily responsible for supporting our food and beverage manufacturer customers in Pakistan and Iran with new product development, value optimisation and other product enhancements. In my role as Tate & Lyle’s Application and Technical Support Manager, I serve as a bridge between customers and the broader Tate & Lyle team by understanding consumer preferences and needs and turning them into actionable partnership opportunities. I use insights into local industry trends to create products tailored for my local markets, while supporting and advising food manufacturers on different aspects of their manufacturing operations especially recipe development, process adjustments and problem solving.

When did Tate & Lyle start its operation in Pakistan and what are the key areas of expertise?

Tate & Lyle is a world leader in ingredient solutions for healthier food and beverage and has been operating for more than 160 years. Over this time, it has expanded to support customers in more than 120 countries and in Pakistan, where we are known for this rich heritage, we have been supporting customers for more than two decades

via our extensive sales network. We provide ingredients and solution in key categories - dairy, bakery, beverage, soups, sauces, and dressings – which are highly relevant categories in Pakistan’s food culture.

Our ingredient solutions are highly relevant, too. Sugar reduction, an established global consumer trend, is a key consumer and industry trend here. Many of the customer briefs that I’ve worked on recently have a sugar reduction goal, such as developing a reduced sugar fruit flavoured beverage, and often we bring a combination of our ingredients to deliver a healthier product that doesn’t compromise on taste. Our toolkit of sugar reduction solutions, including low- and no-calorie sweeteners such as sucralose and sweetener blends, is extensive, and often it’s a mix or a ‘sugar reduction solution’ as we call it, that meets the customer brief and consumers’ taste expectations.

When you change an ingredient in a recipe to enhance its health credentials this will affect how all other ingredients interact in the ‘food matrix’, the complex interplay of nutrients in a food or beverage. It’s very rare that one ingredient is an exact match for another one.

Many of our ingredient solutions for healthier and enhanced products require the use of one of our texturants or functional systems, which can enable a seamless reformulation by replacing other ingredients while maintaining overall mouthfeel sensation. By doing this, the consumer can enjoy the same eating or drinking experience despite the formulation changes. At Tate & Lyle, our purpose is Transforming Lives through the Science of Food and through our product portfolio, global footprint and application know-how, we believe we can help our customers make a real difference to some of society’s biggest public health challenges. It motivates us every day.

What are the key challenges the food industry has experienced in the last two years post‐pandemic?

It’s clearly a tough time for businesses and the consumers they serve. Every business in the sector will be grappling with some level of supply challenge or commodity or energy price increase.

Manufacturers are looking for more functionality in products such as new nutrition or health claims they can make, while also looking for cost optimisation opportunities to help them to manage these rising input costs. This is especially true in Pakistan.

We are more than suppliers to our customers, we are partners and we work closely to ensure they receive maximum value from our leading

ingredient portfolio and technical expertise. We help them to manage pressures to their business, in some cases to lower the overall price of inputs, and unlock new opportunities, launching successful products that deliver on key consumer trends.

How much Tate & Lyle is investing in R&D and which steps are taken to improve environment friendliness?

I work within the Turkey, Middle East and Africa (TMEA) regional team and late last year we announced a significant investment of US $2.2 million in a world class technical and commercial support centre, located in Dubai, to serve our regional customer base. We also have a pilot plant set up for dairy, ice cream, beverages, soups, sauces, dressing, bakery and snacks, where customers partner with us to trial formulation changes before introducing them into their production environments. Our analytical lab enables us to understand how ingredients interact and behave within a formulation so we can ensure that our ingredient solutions will provide the desired results. More broadly, Tate & Lyle is committed to investing more capital in research and development, creating new products and becoming our customers innovation partner of choice.

Tate & Lyle is dedicated to providing comprehensive solutions to a demanding set of markets. Are there any exciting new products, especially for Pakistani and Irani market?

Sugar reduction is a major trend in this market, which is why the demand for our sweetener blends is growing, particularly from producers in the dairy and beverage categories. We offer a wide range of cost-effective sweetener blends alongside ingredients such as TASTEVA ® Stevia Sweetener, one of our premium stevia-based sweeteners, which has a clean, sweet taste and also enables higher levels of sugar reduction at acceptable cost-in-use.

Tate & Lyle’s premium OPTIMIZER STEVIA ® sweetener range is designed to replace sugar in a wide range of food and beverage products, helping food and beverage producers to make heathier products that their customers love, with no compromise on taste.

This year we have heard about the acquisition of Quantum Hi‐Tech (Guangdong) Biological Co., Ltd. How much did this acquisition strengthen Tate & Lyle’s position as a leading global player in dietary fibre?

We also have a broad fibre portfolio as many consumers worldwide are seeking to boost their daily fibre intake and draw on the many health benefits. With our acquisition of Quantum, our fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS) and galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS) business in China, we have extended our portfolio further and are even better placed to meet growing global demand for dietary fibre.