The sweets and snacks industries are always good for surprises. Bösch Boden Spies, one of Europe’s leading import and service agencies for food ingredients, plays a part in this as well. The Hamburg-based company that teamed up with Ocean Spray to launch the cranberry on the European market in the early 1990s is now introducing a further development: Crunchy Cranberries. Kay Schumacher, Head of Product Application & Development, and Tim Richardsen, Northern Europe Sales Team Leader, discuss trends and sweet challenges.

sweets processing: Dried cranberries are well established in the sweets and snacks sector. How did the idea of Crunchy Cranberries come about?
Kay Schumacher: Our partner Ocean Spray is a cranberry specialist and wanted to close existing gaps in the use of cranberries. To do this, they looked for a new way of snacking and found it in Crunchy Cranberries. The crunchy variant opens up entirely new possibilities in processing, and innovative textures for sweets and snacks manufacturers.

Tim Richardsen: Sweetened and dried cranberries have now become established in a wide range of food categories. However, they are not suitable for spicy snack mixes with chips or pretzels, for example, because they cause other snack ingredients to become soggy. The new cranberries don’t do this. In sweets and snacks, they are also a perfect response to the trend towards crunchy textures. Nuts in sweet snacks are more popular than ever, and Crunchy Cranberries are just as crunchy.

sp: Which limits are there to the use of dried fruit in sweets and snacks?
Schumacher: Apart from one or two technical limitations, I don’t see any limits. Of course, every process in sweets and snacks has its own special factors, and not every dried fruit can be used in every case, but a great deal is possible, especially in the chocolate sector. We’re working on further pushing the boundaries.

sp: You mentioned the texture trend. Has the longevity of trends in sweets and snacks changed over the years?
Richardsen: Of course, everything has sped up. The snacking trend already brought real momentum. Conscious nutrition, driven by the media, has become a kind of religion, especially in well-educated countries: How do I nourish myself? Where do the products come from? How can I feed myself quickly and enjoy it at the same time? What snacks are sweet, but wholesome? These are all questions that are greatly challenging the sweets and snacks industries right now. Often, it’s a matter of reducing sugar, but there is also pressure to source cocoa from sustainable sources and consider the people in the growing regions – as well as the environment.

sp: What is the key factor driving global trend development?
Schumacher: In my opinion, it is digitization. It leads to consumers who are both aware and eager for knowledge. On the other hand, most trends continue to spread along the traditional path: first America, then England, then more conservative Europe. One recent example are chunky chocolate products. They have been known in English-speaking countries for over ten years, and in our country for about three.

sp: Has it become more difficult to launch a product in times of enlightened consumers?
Schumacher: At the very least, the complexity is on a steady increase. Trends from various food industry segments are migrating into others. For a long time, vegan, lactose-free or gluten-free products played no role at all in the mass market for sweets and snacks. These topics reached the sweets and snacks industries from the baked goods and dairy industries. This offers producers enormous opportunities because it leads to a huge range with numerous and high-quality products. At Bösch Boden Spies, we rely on premium ingredients. They match our company philosophy, and demand is growing.

Richardsen: And premium no longer refers only to ingredients, but to the entire supply chain. Which is why we work exclusively with long-term ingredient partners and know every step in the production. Things taste even better to consumers if they can be sure of the well-being of everyone involved in a product.

sp: What criteria will determine the success of a sweets or snack product in the years ahead?
Schumacher: As I see it, transparency and sustainability are paramount. In connection with the fact that customers increasingly want to know what they are getting – honestly and openly and without claims that don’t stand up to later scrutiny. Sugar reduction will play an increasingly important role in sweets and snacks. And textures. We want our ingredients, like Crunchy Cranberries, to be used to create interesting sensory experiences. This is why we’re constantly on the lookout for new fruit and nut ingredients worldwide.

Richardsen: At the end of the day, the most important thing is taste!


Crunchy Cranberries

The secret of the Cranberry novelty lies in its drying process, a kind of “gentle baking”, that preserves the valuable substances of the fruit such as proanthocyanidins, phenolic and organic acids as well as the bright colour to the greatest possible extent. This process ensures a particularly crisp texture that lasts up to 15 months. Crunchy Cranberries retain their round berry shape even after the drying process and are particularly suitable for chocolate coating. In contrast to normally sweetened dried cranberries, the crunchy version is mechanically very stable and does not tend to powder, break or stick during processing. Their sugar and calorie content is significantly lower than that of conventionally dried cranberries. The bulk density is 200 to 300 g/l, with a moisture content of about 3 %. Since they are less hygroscopic than freeze-dried fruits, they are also attractive for snacks, granola/cereals and roasted nut or fruit mixtures. Eaten on their own, they are an alternative to potato chips and other snacks. Crunchy Cranberries are a development from the American farmers’ cooperative Ocean Spray and are exclusively distributed in Europe by Bösch Boden Spies. The official product launch took place in October 2018.