Kerry’s leadership knows that flavor development isn’t just about the next big trend. It’s also about improving nutrition without compromising on taste and finding cost-effective taste solutions for supply shortages.
Perfumer & Flavorist+ probed the company’s president and chief executive officer to learn more about Kerry’s global initiatives and how they are leveraging technology to provide delicious, cost-effective solutions.
Kerry
Location, Country
2024 Sales: €8 billion
What are some of the most important initiatives Kerry is currently pursuing, and how do they align with the company’s long-term goals?
Our 2030 goal is to reach over two billion people with sustainable nutrition solutions.
Our industry is faced with a range of challenges, from inflation to supply insecurity, increased regulation to sustainability targets. Global and national pressures, along
John Savage, president, chief executive officer, KerryCourtesy of Kerry
At Kerry, we are uniquely positioned to help navigate these challenging circumstances. As President and CEO of Taste at Kerry, I am particularly proud of our science-backed taste solutions, which we use to partner with our customers to:
- Improve nutrition by reducing salt, optimizing sweetness or enhancing nutritional value, all while maintaining great taste.
- Create cost-effective taste solutions for predicted supply shortages, like cocoa and orange juice, helping our customers manage costs and supply chain uncertainty.
- Deliver cost effective, more environmentally friendly and healthier alternatives to using traditional smoking methods and dairy-based ingredients, helping customers meet their sustainability targets.
How is Kerry leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to enhance product development and improve efficiency in flavor creation?
Kerry leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to connect customers with innovative food and beverage concepts. Our new, custom-built AI-powered tools enable the creation of tailored recipes backed by market insights and Kerry’s expertise in taste and nutrition. We see huge potential in scaling up these technologies, to offer more tailored services, and to get things done better and faster. We’ll be excited to share these with our customer base in the months ahead.
Kerry has various innovation hubs and research centers globally. Can you share how these hubs contribute to the development of breakthrough technologies and products?
Our 70+ technology and innovation centers support the development of great tasting and balanced ingredient solutions for our customers who today reach almost 1.4 billion consumers globally.
Focusing specifically on taste, we have dedicated Global Taste Centres of Excellence which develop and optimize the various taste technologies within our offerings. Citrus greening disease and climate change have led to recent supply chain issues for citrus fruits, affecting both quality and availability of related products. At our Centre of Excellence for Citrus in Lakeland Florida, our experts are focused on developing solutions to these issues, ensuring we have the most innovative range of high impact, cost-effective and stable citrus taste solutions on the market. This enables our customers to reformulate using Kerry’s Citrus Taste solutions to improve costs and reduce supply chain uncertainty.
As a leader, what is your long-term vision for Kerry? How do you see the company evolving over the next decade in terms of innovation, market leadership, and sustainability?
Kerry continues to innovate to improve the healthfulness, cost and sustainability profile of foods, while maintaining great taste. Our offering in Dairy Taste is a good example of this. Dairy is a favorite ingredient in many markets, but the product can be subject to volatile and fluctuating prices, have a significant impact on a product’s nutritional profile, as well as a large carbon footprint.
Kerry have developed a range of sustainable Dairy Taste solutions that can be incorporated into our customers’ products, enabling them to reduce and stabilize costs inputs, and achieve an improved nutritional profile and lower carbon footprint for their products, all whilst maintaining the taste of dairy that consumers love.
Another interesting area is smoke conversion. We all love the smoky, charred taste of open fire cooking, but conventional smoking is a resource intensive process due to the damaging impact of smoke on infrastructure, and its high energy and water requirements. Our smoke technology removes the contaminants often found in conventionally smoked meats, and reduces the volume of inputs required, lower the costs, and reducing the carbon footprint of smoking foods by over 40%. Smoke flavorings are therefore a more cost-effective, healthier and environmentally friendly alternative to conventional smoking while maintaining the great taste we are all familiar with.
How is Kerry adapting to global changes in dietary habits and flavor expectations?
The flavor industry has undergone significant change over the past decades to be less dependent on chemicals, and more reliant on taste coming from real food. Our corporate roots are in the natural food and agricultural sectors, which gives us an advantage.
Our customers are looking for a taste partner for two reasons. The first is to create an authentic, consumer preferred taste experience, so for example, the best tasting cheese snack for a particular market.
The second reason is when a customer has taste challenges arising from issues that require more than just great taste alone. For example, nutritional enhancement to meet regulatory guidelines or industry body recommendations, achieving sustainability targets, minimizing costs and volatility in supply constraints etc. Here is where we’re different as we can leverage our wider Kerry processing capability, beyond the processes used for traditional flavor creation to support our customers in addressing these needs.
An interesting area in the taste space is the impact of anti-obesity medications on food and beverage formulations. GLP-1 consumers are looking for small, nutrient dense food portions that are packed with high quality calories and ingredients all while tasting great. Protein is integral to these, alongside functional ingredients, vitamins and minerals, but these are generally coupled with unappealing taste profiles. Our customers are coming to us to help them deliver great tasting, nutritionally enhanced products. Our TastesenseTM masking portfolio expertly masks these off notes, supporting our customers to balance flavor with functionality.
Can you share any recent breakthroughs or innovations that highlight Kerry’s contribution to the industry?
Kerry recently introduced Tastesense™ Salt, a groundbreaking innovation that delivers rich, savory taste without adding sodium. Salt has an up-front, middle and long taste profile but many sodium-reduced crisps on the market were missing the up-front saltiness. Re-creating that initial salty taste impact in crisps, baked goods and other snacks is something that companies have long struggled with. We recognized that gap in the market – an ingredient capable of recreating salt’s up-front ‘bite’ and developed Tastesense SaltTM. A solution allowing for significant sodium reduction—up to 60% in some applications—while maintaining essential flavor properties, Tastesense™ Salt is designed for both simple and complex formulations, leveraging Kerry's expertise in taste receptor science and proprietary product chemistry.
Another example is cocoa: a beloved flavor worldwide, but an industry under threat. The cocoa market experienced a 26% drop in global supply due to climate change and crop diseases, causing cocoa prices to triple since 2023. Our innovative Cocoa Booster, a groundbreaking taste technology, reduces the need for cocoa raw materials by up to 50%. It helps manage supply risks, ensure price stability, maintain taste consistency and lower the product’s overall carbon footprint, making it more cost-efficient and environmentally friendly for our customers to reformulate affordable, great tasting products for their customers.
These innovations highlight Kerry's commitment and contribution to creating sustainable, nutritious products without compromising on taste.
Looking ahead, what are some key areas where Kerry plans to focus its growth and innovation in the coming decade?
Consumers are increasingly concerned about inflation, and the opportunity for growth for both Kerry and for our customers will be centered around innovating and reformulating cost-effectively while maintaining exceptional taste. We will stay agile, proactive, and continuously adapt our portfolio to meet the changing demands of the industry delivering increased value for our customers around costs, sustainability, supply constraints and enhanced nutrition.
We will continuously aim to be our customers’ most trusted and valued partner, and the future of sustainable nutrition, delivering a positive impact for people, society, the planet and, crucially, our customers.
