CP Kelco and Chr. Hansen announced to offer customers a collaboration combining their world-leading expertise and solutions to take consumer-friendly, shelf-stable, plant-based yogurt alternatives to the next level. Consumer demand for healthy and more sustainable food choices has driven an explosion in launches of plant-based alternatives to traditional dairy products.

Within these categories, manufacturers and retailers have recognized the advantages of shelf-stable products, which can reduce food waste and increase geographical reach. For consumers, ambient-stable products offer convenience. However, to embrace regular consumption consumers are not ready to compromise on taste, nutrition, and the "naturalness" of shelf-stable, plant-based products.

Industrially validated prototypes for oat, soy, pea, coconut and almond: CP Kelco and Chr. Hansen have closely collaborated to demonstrate that production of nutritious and great-tasting, ambient, plant-based yogurt alternatives are possible for a variety of different plant bases. The result of this collaboration includes industrially validated prototypes of drinkable and spoonable vegurts with either oat, soy, pea, coconut or almond bases.

Prototype recipes can be customized: To date, a range of vegurt prototypes are available to food producers for tasting, and they have received positive feedback from select customers. The prototype recipes can be tweaked to meet specific requirements for sugar, protein, fat, texture and flavor, thanks to the comprehensive expertise in fermentation, stabilization, flavor, processing and packaging offered by the collaboration. The vegurts will be available for tasting at CP Kelco stand 4.C180 at Food Ingredients Europe (FIE) in Paris, December 6-8.