Maxime Angelucci, the CEO of Natural Origins; and Döhler’s product manager for fruit and vegetable ingredients, Julian Bopp, about the ways in which Döhler can supports its client demand for botanical and fruit and vegetable ingredients.

Angelucci explains that Natural Origins, a subsidiary of Döhler based in Lyon, is focused solely on botanical ingredients.

“Our role is really to source the best of the botanicals from the entire world, bring them to Lyon, and then transform that into ingredients,” he says. “We are part of Döhler, and our real goal is to bring botanical expertise into the ‘excellence of nutrition’ of Döhler.”

Together with Döhler, Natural Origins is promoting its latest Optifine botanical powders, which are water dispersible rather than water soluble, meaning that consumers can still see some of the original botanical ingredients in end-use applications without feeling a gritty or bitty texture. With insatiable appetite for natural and minimally processed foods, Angelucci says that this is “absolutely key”.

FoodBev also spoke with Döhler product manager for fruit and vegetable ingredients Julian Bopp. As part of their booth at SIAL Paris this year, Döhler were exhibiting a unique fruit and vegetable juice concept that blends orange juice with zucchini juice.

Bopp explains that zucchini allows its customers to taper the sugar content of their beverages, customising the level of zucchini in their products to match their taste requirements and calorie reduction goals all the way up to around 50%, which is where the quantity of zucchini juice – and the subsequent textural challenges – begin to overpower the orange. The taste is subtle and natural, with the zucchini offering a nice savoury contrast to the orange.

“It depends of course on how much the market is willing to cope with vegetables; we have seen customers here from Japan who are more used to vegetables [in juices] so we can go higher in veggie content, and some European markets where we have to be a bit lower on that side, but Döhler is capable of doing that – delivering recipes tailor-made to the customer’s preferences.”

As for the almost sweet and savoury combinations that fruit and vegetables juices give you, Bopp says: “It is still a growing market, I would say. There are markets like Japan, those big ones, where we have been in that segment for 20 years promoting fruits and vegetable juices. The US market has also followed that a few years ago, and Europe has already in the past few years gone into it – the UK and the Netherlands at the forefront maybe, but Germany, France, Poland, really following that.”