Company: GNT Group

Website: exberry.com

Ingredient Snapshot: Coloring Foods supplier GNT Group has developed a range of blue powders derived from spirulina with significantly higher color intensity. They are available in both standard and micronized powder form.

The new EXBERRY high intensity blues are offered with a choice of carriers, including maltodextrin or sugar. They are guaranteed to be trehalose-free, ensuring good levels of consumer acceptance.

Food and beverage manufacturers can use the new powders to formulate products with high intensity blues from a natural and traceable source – and at reduced doses. They offer superior solubility and stability in a number of applications. In addition, they are particularly suitable for incorporating into instant beverages, hard-panned products, fondant, white chocolate and pressed tablets.

Sonja Scheffler, product manager at GNT, said: “The challenge of achieving vibrant blue colors in food using only ingredients from a natural origin is well understood. However, naturalness is what consumers are demanding so there is pressure on manufacturers to deliver that. Our new high intensity blue powders from spirulina will make it significantly easier to do so at lower doses without compromising on important product performance factors such as solubility and stability.”

GNT produces Coloring Foods from spirulina in its state-of-the-art, dedicated facility in Mierlo, Netherlands. In a recent investment program, the company doubled its spirulina processing capacity, consolidating EXBERRY as leader in the market for blue Coloring Foods, which have traditionally been notoriously difficult to produce. Spirulina is a blue-green algae, valued for its coloring and nutritional properties and is widely and safely consumed globally.

EXBERRY Coloring Foods are coloring ingredients obtained from fruits, vegetables and edible plants using gentle, physical processes such as pressing, chopping, filtering and concentrating. The products retain the characteristic properties of the source material and the concentrates are not selectively extracted. Consequently, within the EU they are not classed as food additives but foods with coloring properties and, therefore, qualify for cleaner and clearer labeling declarations. Made with GNT’s own innovative processes, they can impart almost any color shade to foods and beverages and are ideally suited for industrial use.

To ensure the highest level of quality and year-round availability, GNT controls the entire EXBERRY supply chain, with cultivation and harvesting monitored by GNT’s agricultural engineers.