MANE relentless pursuit of excellence leads to transformative flavor solutions that delight consumers and elevate brands. Through pioneering sustainability efforts and innovative approaches, we shape the future of flavor, offering exceptional taste experiences that meet changing consumer demands.
MANE
Le Bar-sur-Loup, France
2024 Sales: €1,945 million
MANE Group’s Year of Expansion and Innovation
2024 has marked a year of significant achievements and milestones for MANE. MANE reported sales of €1,945 million, an impressive organic growth of +11.2% vs 2023, on a like-for-like basis. This success is complemented by strategic executive appointments, including new directors for the Americas region, EMEA and
Samantha MANE, chief executive officer, MANE GroupCourtesy of MANE
The Beverage and Sweet businesses performed exceptionally well, with functional nutrition and dairy leading the charge. MANE’s portfolio of encapsulation technologies continues to gain market interest, driving unique consumer experiences.
MANE has expanded its global capabilities, investing in its flavor production facility in Lebanon, Ohio, and enhancing operations and business support. Strong investments aim to increase capacity in the beverage, sweet goods, and culinary segments for the next 20 years. Construction work will begin on the Sablé-sur-Sarthe site, which will feature a new powdered flavor production unit, and new investments in extrusion facilities in Le Bar-sur-Loup, reinforcing our investments in France. In Latin America, investments to expand production capacities in Mexico and Brazil.
MANE received a Supplier Innovation Award from a top global confection CPG, highlighting its ability to attract and retain high-value clients. Our flavor division achieved industry-leading growth by strengthening partnership positions with key accounts and driving revenue from new customers.
The change in Group governance was announced: Samantha Mane succeeded her father, Jean Mane, as CEO, becoming the first woman to lead the company, underscoring MANE’s commitment to remaining an independent, family-owned and -run business.
Innovating for Evolving Tastes and Dietary Trends
MANE addresses health, sustainability and affordability challenges by adapting to evolving dietary habits and flavor expectations. Consumers prefer natural, transparent food choices with simple labels and view more and more food as functional medicine, incorporating more protein and fiber, even in snacks and confections. Despite these changes, the demand for great taste and authentic profiles remains strong. The focus on protein intake presents flavor challenges related to absorption and undesirable tastes. MANE tackles these by understanding ingredient interactions and using its extensive encapsulation systems portfolio to reduce protein binding, ensuring exceptional taste experiences.
With our SENSE CAPTURE™ Precision Taste Modulation program, we enhance taste perceptions and reduce undesirable ones for complex food and drink products. Our Taste Modulation experts deliver the optimal taste experience consumers demand. Using the Precision Taste Modulation wheel, our experts address nine key dimensions of taste, including mouthfeel and flavor intensity, making it effective for reduced sugar and plant-based products. By leveraging our expertise in taste modulation and encapsulation, MANE adapts to global dietary trends, providing innovative solutions that meet consumers’ evolving needs while maintaining our commitment to quality and excellence.
MANE leverages traditional and cutting-edge technologies, from infusions and distillations to supercritical extraction and spinning cone columns, to deliver outstanding natural ingredients with optimized organoleptic profiles. MANE SOURCE™ offers pure, traceable flavors from carefully sourced raw materials, ensuring minimal processing and clear labelling for an authentic taste experience. Our flavor ingredients can be used as such in end-use applications or in our formulations to create complete solutions with complex and culinary profiles. Consumers benefit from transparency and quality, enjoying flavors true to their origins.
Combining aromatic intelligence with advanced analytical technologies and sensory methodologies, MANE leverages its SENSE CAPTURE™ database, in-house and external, and dedicated delivery systems to achieve perfect flavor balance and optimal taste experiences. Our flavorists push boundaries by using sub-threshold compounds and low-volatile molecules to fine-tune taste perception, creating balanced and complex flavors. Discovering new flavor molecules through bio-fermentation and advanced extraction methods expands possibilities while ensuring sustainability. Customization is key. By tailoring flavors to specific applications, adding new taste functions, and educating customers on optimized expertise solutions, MANE unlocks new dimensions of enjoyment.
Flavor trends are constantly evolving. At MANE, our TREND CAPTURE™ platform highlights key shifts redefining consumers’ relationship with food and drink. Innovation is driven by consumer insights, helping MANE stay ahead of trends and deliver products that exceed expectations.
Harnessing Sensory Science for Enhanced Flavor and Texture
Food & Beverage producers seek to improve sensory characteristics for better palatability and drinkability. Our sensory teams conduct evaluations across various products to understand off-notes in dairy or meat alternatives and the mouthfeel of sugar-reduced drinks. By understanding human perceptions of taste, smell, and texture, we fine-tune formulations to resonate with consumers. Our expertise in flavor creation and sensory advancements allows us to craft complex, signature flavors that elevate products. Through global collaboration, we gain insights from diverse markets, creating personalized products that meet local preferences while aligning with sustainability and health trends. This approach drives our commitment to innovation, exceeding consumer expectations.
Leveraging AI for Innovation in Flavor Creation and Market Insights
MANE is at the forefront of integrating artificial intelligence (AI) across various facets of our business, including flavor formulation, consumer insights, trend forecasting and research and development (R&D). AI-driven tools enhance creativity, optimize formulations, and ensure regulatory compliance. AI-powered analytics monitor market trends, predict consumer preferences and support strategic decision-making.
One of our key AI initiatives is TWINS, our digital R&D assistant. Fueled by millions of analytical and sensory datapoints, TWINS enables us to create high-performing flavors faster for our clients. It supports our evaluators in identifying the best flavor solutions, significantly speeding up the development process.
Another innovative tool is TREND CAPTURE™, our global trend monitoring platform. By embedding AI capabilities, TREND CAPTURE™ transforms vast amounts of web data into valuable trend insights and innovative flavor concepts for our customers’ brands, allowing us to stay ahead of market trends and deliver cutting-edge solutions.
A notable success story involves our use of AI to optimize research experiments and predict molecular performance. This has accelerated our R&D processes and improved the accuracy and efficiency of our formulations. By leveraging AI, we can anticipate consumer needs and preferences, ensuring our products resonate with the market.
Innovative Approaches to Answer Sourcing Challenges
The flavor industry faces significant sourcing challenges due to climate change, geopolitical instability, regulatory pressures and market volatility. Key ingredients like citrus, spices, vanilla, cocoa, coffee and palm oil are particularly affected by extreme weather, supply chain disruptions and increasing sustainability requirements. For example, the orange market faces long-term concerns due to greening disease, cocoa prices have surged short-term, driving the adoption of replacers to manage costs and availability, coffee beans are impacted by weather conditions, while black pepper is affected by rains in Vietnam and Sri Lanka.
To address these challenges, MANE is investing in innovative solutions and alternative ingredients. This includes using raw material replacers with authentic formulations to ensure flavor quality and supply security or using building blocks and fractions to replace oils while maintaining flavor profiles. We are also diversifying sourcing regions, creating new varietals, and strengthening our regenerative agriculture policy. By multiplying sourcing zones and collaborating with suppliers, we develop cultivation techniques that respect soils, ecosystems and biodiversity.
Thanks to organic chemistry, we have created MAXITRUS™, a molecule with a powerful organoleptic profile and a limited impact on the environment. MAXITRUS™ is a game changer for orange drink applications, offering cost-competitive, stable orange flavors not dependent on citrus raw material. We are also conducting R&D projects on citrus varieties adapted to the devastating HLB disease, in partnership with CIRAD. Our flavorists have developed authentic profile reconstitutions of sensitive agricultural ingredients, reducing dependence on raw materials and providing short-term solutions to supply issues.
At MANE, we are committed to driving innovation and sustainability to navigate these sourcing challenges and continue delivering differentiating, high-quality, responsible flavor solutions to serve our partners’ needs.
