Chr. Hansen Natural Colors adds two new bright solutions to its natural colour portfolio. The first, called FruitMax Yellow 1000 WSS, is a colouring food from turmeric that can be used across applications such as confectionery, ice cream, snacks or bakery.

Turmeric is a well-liked ingredient and one of the few raw materials that produces a bright yellow. Special attention has been placed on minimizing the off-taste that can accompany turmeric. For legislative reasons, the new product is likely to find its core markets in Europe, Latin America and APAC. It is fully compliant with the EU Colouring foodstuffs guidelines, and therefore is a clean label colour that can be listed as turmeric extract.

The other newcomer is FruitMax Blue 1506 WS, a solution that is uniquely robust for hard candy and lozenges. Blue is notoriously scarce in the natural colour palette and, so far, there is only one globally accepted natural source of blue colour. It comes from spirulina, also well-known in the food supplement market as a “super food.”

Stable in many applications, standard spirulina formulations meet their match in the tough production conditions of boiled candy. This technical challenge is now solved as the Chr. Hansen R&D and application team have developed a special, liquid blue that protects the colour in that instant it hits the very hot candy mass.

Hard candy is perhaps the most price-sensitive confectionery category, but also in this segment, consumers are increasingly wanting natural and healthy ingredients. The new solution will be especially appealing to health conscious brands using other natural ingredients, like menthol in lozenges.