By Dr. Bernhard Reichenbach, Chefredakteur

While consumer demand for natural and healthy products has been a trend that has been going on for some time, it has continued to accelerate due to the emphasis on wellness and healthy living caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. In the current situation, consumers are more likely to adopt preventive health behaviour, with strengthening the immune system – for example with the help of healthy ingredients – being cited as an important concern.

We take this dynamic trend into account, and in the special section of this issue, we report on healthy ingredients such as high-quality nut specialties, allergen-free granulates with an authentic nut flavour and innovative cranberry products as well as a new wheat germ concentrate, which is supposed to strengthen the immune defense.

Our “sp portrait” series is also about ingredients: this time, we are presenting the Austrian ingredients specialist esarom. The family business is considered a leading supplier of flavouring ingredients for the food and luxury food industry far beyond the country’s borders.

In the “technology” section, we are also showing a clever solution: for sorting puffed grain, a Swiss cereal processing specialist relies on an optical sorting system from Tomra Food and has thus been able to significantly optimize its output.

The Dresden Packaging Conference, which in 2020 took place in digital form, is the focus of the “packaging” section. This time, the traditional industry get-together dealt with cutting-edge topics such as sustainability, circular economy and digitization.