FiE 2024 live: Beneo introduces faba bean-powered nutritious plant-based foods with gluten-free texturates

Beneo is setting the stage for the future of plant-based food, showcasing faster, more efficient solutions for hybrid and entirely plant-based product launches at the ongoing Food ingredients Europe (FiE) 2024 trade show. 

With the help of its faba bean protein concentrate and its texturates from the Dutch company Meatless, Beneo hopes to revolutionize recipe development by using ingredients that tackle sustainability issues while balancing taste, texture and nutrition.

Beneo shares that around one in three consumers worldwide identify as flexitarians and three out of five consumers are interested in plant-based nutrition. At the trade fair in Frankfurt, Germany, the company is showcasing plant-based foods like cheese balls, chocolate, faba bean protein-based egg-free meringue, white fish fillet and Asian-style plant-based chicken skewers.

Nutrition Insight is reporting live from the show floor, speaking with the company’s head of Product Management Functional Proteins, Els van Herck, who unveils Beneo’s portfolio with enhanced Nutri-Scores to satisfy consumer demands. 

Fréderic Fernandes, product manager of Functional Proteins at Beneo, also tells us about its faba bean factory opening in 2025.

How do you ensure that plant-based ingredients enhance the texture and taste of products while boosting their overall nutritional value? 
Fernandes: We have quite an arsenal of plant-based ingredients with Beneo, all of which can enhance the nutritional profile of other products. We are presenting our plant-based feta cheese balls to achieve a complete vegan cheese alternative. It contains Beneo’s protein concentrate, starch-rich flour from faba bean, rice starch, rice flour and Orafti Inulin chicory root fiber. Looking at the cheese alternative market today, you will see that the Nutri Score is quite a struggle.

Many plant-based cheeses have a very bad Nutri-Score of D. What you can achieve by adding this Orafti Inulin to the end recipe of the vegan cheese is that you can accomplish a Nutri-Score of C. So there’s a very quiet improvement. And that’s something that we also try to do for all the other applications.

Van Herck: If you look at the Meatless portfolio, the focus is on all kinds of textured flakes — textured rice flakes, textured faba flakes and textured quinoa flakes — that are great for meat alternatives or hybrid products because they hold the juice and the texture. 

We notice that new product launches — vegetarian, vegan or hybrid — often don’t work because their taste and texture are just not good. From a nutrition point of view, we all know that a textured rice flake is very nice because it has these sensory properties, but with a low level of protein.

A combination of rice, faba and quinoa sources increases the protein level by around 18%. For example, in our taco, the minced meat is plant-based and made with a special Meatless flake, which we say has the texture of tuna flakes.

How adaptable are your plant-based solutions to gluten-free, allergen-free and vegan diets?
Fernandes: Beneo has been investing in its faba bean factory and the gluten-free plant taps into one of the most popular trends in plant protein.

BENEO’s plant-based portfolio features nutrient-boosted products like cheese balls, minced meat and egg-free meringue.When we have our factory, we will ensure close control over the supply chain and very good contact with the farmers. Making sure our products are gluten-free is one of our aims. We need this gluten-free market to have some plant proteins available that can be labeled.

On the other hand, allergen-free is also essential, mainly considering soy. I think soy is one of the biggest competitions that we are facing with faba bean, which is also one of the more commonly used plant proteins. It is being avoided not only as an allergen, but also for sustainability reasons, which is why clients try to steer away from it.

Van Herck: Unfortunately, on the Meatless side, we still have customers looking for wheat flakes because they add bite crunch to their meat alternatives. Products like rice and faba are gluten-free, but we cannot call them gluten-free since we produce wheat flakes. So that’s also something that we will look into further, but it’s a trade-off.

But since there’s a lot of soy on the market in the applications that we are looking at, there will be a big push because of the allergy.

How does Beneo align its product development with sustainable nutrition practices?
Van Herck: Today, I’m proud to be here with a hybrid concept on the stand. It fits into the idea and is in our culture, as sustainability is becoming increasingly important.

I looked into hybrids when studying meat sustainability research. If you compare the texture of Meatless flakes, it’s incredible what an impact they can have on carbon footprints. That’s also why we’re here at the fair today with the hybrid concept. I have a lot of positive reactions to it.

Also, people say it’s great we formulate hybrids explicitly but most are a bit scared to discuss it openly. So, I believe that the Meatless portfolio, whether you look at meat alternatives or hybrids, has a significant impact on sustainability, certainly at the level of carbon footprint. 

Fernandes: We are building our pulse-processing factory in Offstein, Germany, and we source our faba beans from farmers close to the plant, to keep a very short supply chain.

On the production side, Beneo chose faba bean over the more common plant proteins peas and soy because faba is very well suited for making a concentrate. We’re selecting a process called dry fractionation — without water or heat — to achieve a product with very high sustainability and a very low Life Cycle Assessment value. 

With its faba bean factory opening in 2025, BENEO will grow its sustainable plant-based food production.The protein concentrate retains excellent functionalities. It can stand its ground against the soy isolate you find on the market with good emulsification and solubility properties. This makes it suited to replace animal proteins like in dairy, which is a sustainability story.

How can the product be sustainable without compromising nutritional integrity and taste?
Van Herck: Our fish filet example at the stand is purely plant-based. We have our textured rice flakes, which give it a nice texture and juiciness. Our fish filet is successful and has a nice white color.

I explicitly say that because we use a newly developed flake that combines rice and mycoproteins. This combination pushes the protein content and makes it much more interesting for plant-based fish. The same product can also play a role in entirely plant-based chicken.

What can we expect in 2025 and beyond?
Fernandes: One of the more exciting things about Beneo is the opening of the faba bean factory in 2025, which is three months from now.

It will be operational in Q1 of 2025, and the first commercial product will be ready in Q2.

Of course, we will further enhance our portfolio, products and ingredients. The Beneo Technology Centre is coming out with different combinations of ingredients, some of which are in our portfolio. Next time at FIE, our ingredient portfolio will be even bigger.

Van Herck: We will be looking deeper into different applications for faba because there is still a vast world to explore with plenty more possibilities with the faba concentrate.

We’ve had positive feedback at the show here on the hybrid solution, so we’re certainly going to focus further on hybrids.

We know that from a nutritional point of view, we will have some challenges meeting the expectations. It’s not only about taste and texture, although they are number one; it will also be about the protein content and balancing that with the visual properties. High protein content means that you affect the color. And if you affect the color, we will not keep a plant-based consumer happy with a brown fish filet.

With live reporting from William Bradford Nichols at FiE 2024 in Frankfurt, Germany.