FDBusiness.com

Taura Natural Ingredients’ Mini’s™ – possibly the world’s smallest real fruit pieces – are now available to manufacturers across Europe and the US.

As tiny as a grain of quinoa, Mini’s™ is an innovative range of extremely small real fruit pieces developed to enable food manufacturers to add the benefits of real fruit to applications where it has not before been possible.

Demand is increasing across the world for very small real fruit pieces that are suitable for use in fine bakery and confectionery applications such as ultra-thin biscuits and premium thin chocolate tablets. This increased demand can be attributed to health-conscious consumers seeking out indulgent products with fewer calories so they can enjoy snacking on treats without the guilt.

Mini’s™ are also great as toppings on donuts and muffins and as inclusions in fruit & nut mixes. They are perfect as a fresh addition to frozen dairy beverages and desserts. Their high fruit content means Mini’s™ are bursting with flavour, aroma, colour and a have a soft, chewy texture – a set of benefits Taura Natural Ingredients has dubbed ‘F.A.C.T.’

Taura Natural Ingredients is targeting Mini’s™ at a range of sectors including industrial food manufacturing, bakery and confectionery. The small size and the consistency of the Mini’s™ pieces means that they travel easily through production equipment such as depositor nozzles and rollers, offering exceptional distribution.

Produced using Taura Natural Ingredients’ unique URC® process, Mini’s™ offer the same superior performance that the company’s other products are already known for. They contain high fruit content with no artificial colours or preservatives, which means they are perfect for clean label products. They are free-flowing and bake stable, so they won’t burn, bleed or discolour during baking, and they have a water activity of 0.35 – 0.50 to suit both dry and moist applications.

Raf Vanlommel, Sales & Marketing Manager at Taura Natural Ingredients, said: “We’ve seen big demand among our customers for very small real fruit pieces that offer an alternative to ingredients that contain high levels of added sugar

and other additives, such as sprinkle-style products. Mini’s™ provide the perfect solution, with each piece offering a tiny burst of flavour, aroma, colour and texture in a wide range of products. They look fantastic, and are very easy to handle during dosing, providing more spots of fruit in the finished product than can be achieved with the same amount of larger fruit pieces.”

URC® (Ultra Rapid Concentration) is a unique process of concentrating the taste, texture and natural goodness of fruit into pieces, flakes and pastes for use in applications such as cakes, snacks, confectionery and chocolate.