Premium, permissible indulgence trends driving ice cream dosing interest: Tetra Pak

Speaking with DairyReporter.com, Kasper Madsboell, director of business and portfolio development, Tetra Pak, said increasing consumer interest for premium ice cream and ice cream deemed healthier but still indulgent are driving demand for its dosing equipment.

"We are constantly working towards developing technologies that match the trends in the ice cream market,"​ said Madsboell.

"For example, the 'permissibility trends' and the 'premium trend' are creating a demand for our equipment to be able to dose and handle expensive ingredients in an extremely precise and gentle way,"​ he said.

Madsboell pinpointed Tetra Pak’s Ingredient Doser 400 A2, designed for the injection of ingredients like fruit pieces, nuts, candies, chocolate pieces, and marmalade, as an example of its efforts to keep up with evolving trends in the ice cream sector.

On the whole though, Tetra Pak strives to ensure its ice cream manufacturing technology is modular to “provide extreme flexibility," ​he said.

“We are constantly challenged in optimizing existing technologies as well as developing new ones that can raise productivity and at the same time can manage the many different product types, recipes, ingredients, coatings, and shapes that are required today.”​

Growth expectations

While Western Europe remains the largest market for ice cream, Tetra Pak sees significant opportunities in developing markets for its technology.

It expects the global ice cream market, valued at US$76.4bn (€59.8bn) in 2013, to grow by around 3.3% to US$78.9bn (€61.7bn) in 2014.

By 2019, global sales are expected to increase to  US$101.8bn (€79.7bn) by 2019 - driven in large by growth in emerging markets in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.

Asia, for example, will strengthen its position as the world's second largest market for ice cream in the next few years - growing from around US$16.4bn (€12.8bn) in 2013 to US$22.1bn (€17.3bn) in 2019, according to Euromonitor.

“We do see great opportunities in the ice cream business, for one thing because there is significant growth expectations in the developing markets around the world,"​ said Madsboell.

“And also for the already high developed markets the opportunity is to develop partnerships with ice cream producers and utilize both sides’ expertise to optimize the complete production process, from raw ingredient to packaged product, in order for the producer to reach the lowest possible production cost and the highest productivity.”​