From idea to finished product in just two weeks? A vision has become a reality. Planteneers makes it possible with the new Plantbaser. This digital configurator shall greatly simplify the development of vegetable foods like plant-based baked goods and snacks.

Within short time, manufacturers can define the criteria for the product they want, building from Planteneers’ extensive solutions portfolio and configure it to their requirements. The provider quickly sends them test samples of the resulting plant-based food innovations, thus greatly accelerating product development.

With the Plantbaser, manufacturers of plant-based foods can put together custom products quickly and easily from a range of different ingredients. “This is a revolution in this market, since there is currently no comparably comprehensive interactive tool,” says Dr Matthias Moser, Managing Director of the Food Ingredients Division of Stern-Wywiol-Gruppe. “We examined in great detail where in the product development process digitalization would pay off. If you look at the overall development process, in our view it makes the most sense to shorten the first phase of the project, from definition of the product to the first sample. With Plantbaser, the many coordination processes can be reduced to the minimum necessary, and the customer gets a new product ready for market much more quickly and efficiently.”

Planteneers has thus applied the principle of individual product configuration, which is now well established in B2C, to the B2B food ingredients arena. Torsten Wywiol, CEO of Stern-Wywiol-Gruppe, explains: “Digitalization is making enormous progress in B2B. Digital customer contact has already become commonplace. So for us, it was a logical consequence to develop an instrument that saves our customers a great deal of time and money through digital product development.”

With the Planteneers configurator, customers can use the entire bandwidth of conceivable products and give their ideas tangible form. This naturally simplifies the process of developing innovations.

Within 15 to 20 min the customer can put together the desired product and order a sample. The sample is ready two weeks later, either as a product ready for tasting or as a powder the customers can process themselves. The ready-to-eat version comes as a set of four individual products. Per order up to three sets can be requested. The same goes for powder, which is available in three different grammages. In addition to material and personnel, refrigerated shipping also generates costs, so samples are not free of charge.

When the customer orders a product sample, he also gets the ingredients list and specifications, plus step-by-step preparation instructions and specifics on the production equipment needed. Companies can check the status of sample orders in their personalized customer account. The product details are likewise stored there. Ideally, the sample meets all expectations. In this case, the cus-tomer can order the respective compounds directly from Sales. If the flavour or texture aren’t quite where they need to be yet, a new configuration can be ordered.