S Black and DSM signed their first agreement in August 2008, covering baking enzymes for the UK market. A spokesperson for the distributor told FoodNavigator.com that it also started selling savoury ingredients as of the end of last year. This staggered introduction was planned from the outset.
S Black’s food business unit manager, Peter Hardy said: “These, combined with our speciality flavour, functional, nutritional plus basic ingredients, means that we are well placed to provide a good technical, product and logistics service to all beverage producers whether looking to reduce costs, improve efficiency or extend their product range.”
In addition, the distributor may focus on specific customers, such as fruit processors or brewers, since the beverage enzymes target particular needs.
Although it is early days for S Black to comment on customer reception, the spokesperson said “the benefits of enzymes are of interest”.
For instance, the benefits S Black is flagging up for Brewers Clarex include increased production capacity and simplify the brewing process, resulting in energy and production cost savings.
The quality of the product is said to be maintained – but with an increased shelf life.
Enzymes are being used increasingly worldwide in the food and beverage processing applications and are expected to rise by 8 per cent each year to reach $1.2bn (€846.2m) by 2011, according to the World Enzymes report by The Freedonia Group.
The food and beverage enzyme market makes up 57 per cent of the overall enzyme market.