Food trends increase scope for valueadding opportunities

From veganism to upcycling, new food trends present avenues for value-adding and exploring new markets. After a recent visit to Switzerland, Lindi Botha reports on two companies making headway in that country.

Over the past few years the food market has seen an explosion of innovation from companies capitalising on bigger shifts towards veganism.

But in their quest to mimic meat, ingredient lists grew longer, negating some of the biggest reasons for a move away from meat.

"Plant-based foods made a lot of headway during the COVID-19 pandemic as people shifted towards healthier lifestyles. But what we saw was food that contained endless lists of unnatural chemicals and additives to make them taste like meat," says Juval Kürzi, founder of Wild Foods in Switzerland.

This graphic designer - a vegan since childhood - spent much of lockdown experimenting with vegetables in his kitchen, employing methods like smoking and drying to achieve meat-like flavours in vegetables.

"The first time I smoked carrots it was so good, I thought, you must be able to buy this,"" Kürzi says.

With the pandemic creating a lot of conversations around what people were eating, what it contained and where it came from, it was the ideal climate to launch a product that was natural, vegan and locally produced.

In 2021, Kürzi took the leap to start a food company that would bring 'clean label' vegan food to the market. Today the company is based largely on just two products - smoked 'salmon' made from carrots, and beetroot 'charcuterie' and jerky (biltong). Both boast fewer than five ingredients each.

A third product was introduced this year to mimic tuna. The celeriac-based product is presented as a tuna-mayonnaise-like filling for sandwiches or dips, with the mayonnaise component made without eggs.

SCALING UP

Kürzi relates that when he started his experiments.