Gummy and jelly sweets infused with active ingredients, such as vitamins and other supplements, are gaining a lot of popularity. In the USA year-on-year sales through supermarkets have shown steady and significant increase since 2018. With signs of Europe starting to follow, enormous market opportunities await.
The spectrum of active ingredients which can be incorporated into gummies and jellies is wide. Alongside commonly used vitamins A, B12, C, D3 and E, they can be carriers for probiotics (for digestive health), collagen (for hair, skin, nails), melatonin (sleep pattern regulation) and many more health, energy and wellbeing supplements. This gives brands lots of room to experiment, define and differentiate themselves through themed product ranges.
Participating in the active candies market, however, takes more than just throwing in some extra ingredients. Active additives need to be handled with care to preserve efficacy, and their presence in a recipe can influence characteristics such as flavour, smell and pH value. Also, cross-contamination of active ingredients in production lines where recipes are switched absolutely has to be avoided for regulatory compliance. Fortunately, this can all be taken care of by having the right production line together with the right advice.
Tanis has been designing and manufacturing confectionery production equipment for over 25 years. The Netherlands-based company’s more recent decision to focus specifically on gums and jellies has seen it become a world leader in this area, utilizing its deep knowledge and expertise to supply complete lines that ensure every stage of the process is harmoniously optimized.
The design of these lines is driven by an enthusiasm for ensuring sweets manufacturers get the very best results. Alongside its continuous cooking process, which gives high control over final moisture content, and thereby quality and consistency, Tanis eagerly shares its food technicians’ knowledge. Customers are offered advice on everything and they can test recipes and process parameters in the company’s laboratory and on the pilot plant in its technical centre to correctly setting up lines for optimized results.
When manufacturing active candy, various special considerations must be taken into account: for example, Tanis advises the addition of certain heat-sensitive active ingredients at the last-possible moment before depositing, to avoid damage through prolonged exposure to high temperatures. They are happy to calculate the amount by which vitamins should be overdosed to compensate for degradation over time, along with the amount of glucose slurry to use to minimize this. They’ll also point out the need to add buffer salt if incorporating vitamin C, to balance its sourness.
Accurate dosing is important for making any kind of sweets. But when active ingredients are involved, it becomes critical. As high-accuracy has always been a Tanis specialism, this is all under control: from adding the ingredients to homogenizing the mix to depositing the individual sweets.
Tanis even has covered the cross-contamination problem, through lines which deposit in easily exchangeable and cleanable, non-starch moulds. Having been the first to develop and introduce a high capacity non-starch system, Tanis’s solution is still considered superior to others that have since followed.
