Leveraging nutritional and functional knowledge: FrieslandCampina reorganizes ingredients company

07 May 2019 --- Former specialist brands of FrieslandCampina Ingredients, the company’s nutrition, food and beverages arm, have been incorporated into strategic customer segments – Early Life Nutrition, Adult Nutrition, Food & Beverages and Animal Nutrition – as the Dutch dairy cooperative taps into the growing global nutrition market. The relaunch also aligns with changing market needs, enhancing solution and service offerings and further leveraging development capabilities to co-create and grow customer partnerships, says FrieslandCampina. While keeping dairy at its core, the company will explore the future growth potential in gut health offerings, protein benefits and personalized nutrition.

FrieslandCampina Ingredients’ new strategic customer segments will incorporate its four individual operating companies: DOMO, Kievit, DMV and Nutrifeed. This marks the company’s evolution to a “unique position in value-added, healthy and functional ingredients and solutions.”

FrieslandCampina Ingredients provides advanced solutions to customer needs for nutritional, healthy and tasty food products, as one unified brand, reflecting changing market segmentation. While keeping dairy at its core, the company will explore the future growth potential in gut health offerings, protein benefits and personalized nutrition. 

“As lifestyles are changing worldwide, we see consumer demand also evolving,” Herman Ermens, Managing Director of Performance, Active and Medical Nutrition at FrieslandCampina Ingredients, tells NutritionInsight. “Consumers are increasingly aware of the positive impact of nutrition in all stages of life and on extending years of healthy living to populations around the world. Consumption patterns show that there is an increasing demand on availability (on-the-move), taste, and food quality, which needs to promise uncompromised safety.”

“To respond to this increasing consumer demand, our customers need new ingredient-solutions, while extending supply-chain flexibility and robustness, without compromising on quality or taste,” he adds. 

“The introduction of FrieslandCampina Ingredients builds on the company’s strong history, which started in 1871 when farmers joined forces in local cooperative dairy factories,” explains Kathy Fortmann, President of FrieslandCampina Ingredients. “Today, we join forces again under one shared commitment: all our market segments are now serving our customers with a unified offering in high-quality nutritional ingredients and solutions for a variety of industries and for all stages of life.”

In the new FrieslandCampina Ingredients organization, the former operating companies are transformed into four strategic segments: 

• Early Life Nutrition: The segment continues to deliver on the trust people have in Infant Milk Formula to help babies thrive and builds on a legacy of more than 75 years as world market leader in nutritional ingredients such as GOS, HMOs and hydrolysates.
• Adult Nutrition: The segment serves Performance, Active and Medical Nutrition. It includes an extensive portfolio of nutritional dairy protein ingredients, providing essential nutrients for those moments when people need them most.
• Food & Beverages: This segment continues a long history of enriching customers’ businesses with unique sensory expertise in creaminess, milkiness, mouthfeel, color and texture for end-products in the coffee, (milk) tea, pastry, decoration, desserts, ice cream and soups and sauces markets, creating indulgent experiences that enhance the senses. Additionally, it includes an extensive portfolio of functional dairy protein ingredients.
• Animal Nutrition: This segment continues to work with an international customer base of dairy farms, building on a legacy of safeguarding high-quality standards and reduced antibiotic treatments for animals. 

“In Adult Nutrition specifically, we see an increased emphasis on enriched protein products – we even see ultra-high protein compact products for medical nutrition – on products enhancing gut health (prebiotics and probiotics) or functional foods that trigger specific biological functions such as sleep,” Ermens notes. 

Additionally, he says that the demand for high-quality, nutrition ingredients and solutions certainly is on the rise. Dairy is the most nutrient-dense product available, a rich and versatile source of high-quality proteins and many other components that offer excellent opportunities for new product concepts which answer the growing need of consumers for natural, high-quality and healthy nutrition. 

Herman Ermens, Managing Director of Performance, Active and Medical Nutrition at FrieslandCampina Ingredients“We are convinced that dairy will continue to play a leading role in the increasing demand for products that support healthy living and healthy aging,” Ermens adds. 

Several aspects will lead to new ingredients and innovative ingredient solutions, such as the company’s investments to better understand consumer needs, to translate this quickly into new innovative ingredient solutions together with their customers, and investments in regulatory and nutritional expertise, explains Ermens. 

“At Vitafoods this week, we are presenting examples of innovative product concepts, for example, a high-protein base powder to reduce the impact of sarcopenia and our innovative Sleepwell concept, which is a natural way to support consumers in enjoying a good night’s sleep,” he notes. 

FrieslandCampina Ingredients’ customers will broadly benefit from this relaunch, according to Ermens. Aside from the additional investments in development, marketing and sales as well as the strengthening of the capabilities and presence in strategic regions, the brand will benefit from the focus on understanding and translating consumer needs into differentiating product concepts. “Where customer insights, knowledge of functional and nutritional aspects of dairy, and the capability to develop good-tasting products come together, is where we are making the difference,” he says. 

“We’ve concentrated our activities in Performance, Active and Medical nutrition into one Adult nutrition platform. This way, we can leverage the nutritional and functional knowledge and capabilities that we have built in the various health benefit platforms, such as in food enrichment, mobility or gut health, for these three sub-segments. And the investments in further developments and regulatory and nutritional knowledge will enable us to better support our customers to bring new product concepts to the market quicker,” Ermens reveals. 

FrieslandCampina Ingredients reported combined sales of €1.7 billion (US$1.9 billion) in FY18 and employs 3,250 employees internationally. The new segments operate facilities worldwide, with regional sales offices in the Netherlands, the US, Singapore, China and Brazil, operating under one unified brand identity and tagline; “The Inside Matters.” 

By Elizabeth Green