Ingredients in Focus is Food Dive’s bite-size column highlighting interesting developments in the ingredients sector.
Demand for specialty ingredients has seen a surge in recent years.
Between changing dietary preferences, a growing population, and increasing consumer awareness of the health benefits associated with specialty ingredients, research and development efforts are being poured into the market.
The specialty food ingredient market size was $112.4 million in 2022 and is expected to reach $168.6 million by 2031, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 5.2%.
When it comes to how the food industry has defined this growing category, CEO of Above Foods Martin Williams said that basically, they are the opposite of commodities.
“There’s probably 100 definitions out there. Quite frankly, the way that we define it is an ingredient that is built specifically for a customer’s need and is not fungible with other like-ingredients,” he said in an interview with Food Dive, “Commodities are price driven — you can find them everywhere, whereas a specialty ingredient, it’s typically grown differently, it’s processed differently, it’s handled differently.”
Above Food produces differentiated ingredients from grains and proteins such as chickpeas, oats, quinoa, lentils, peas, and fava beans in the Northern plains of the U.S. and the western prairie provinces of Canada.
It touts itself on providing a traceable and transparent plant-based supply chain so that its customers and in turn, consumers, know exactly where their food is coming from.
“The drive in demand for specialty ingredients starts with consumers — which are really just people,” said Williams, “what are we eating? How are we eating differently? What do we want to eat? So much of our kind of beliefs around health have evolved, and they now include diet.
The specialty ingredients are really reflective of the trends in the growth of the broader food space, according to Williams.
Retailers are dedicating more shelf space to better-for-you foods, and more consumers are turning over their food products to see where it came from, that wasn’t the case five years ago, he said.
Above Foods is one of the world’s largest producers of regeneratively grown ingredients, according to Williams. The company has specialized technology that allows it to tell its customers how ingredients were grown
“We ask ourselves questions like, is our technology helping our farm producers create better soil, better farms, more sustainably produced agricultural products, because these are the things that matter to our customers,” he said.
Above Foods has custody and oversight of its products across every stage of the food production process.
Its products include flours, puffs and plant-milk bases and are all grown using regenerative farming practices.
