Solvay offers the vanillin the food industry wants today

Putting the ‘natural’ in natural vanillin

At a time when natural flavors are in strong demand, Solvay markets the only natural vanillin sanctioned by the most stringent legislations, ensuring resource efficiency in the process. Here’s how…

Solvay has long been the world’s leading producer of synthetic vanillin under the brand name Rhovanil®. But in recent years, demand from flavor manufacturers and from the food industry in general has been increasingly focusing on natural flavors. From chocolate to pastries to candy bars, more and more brands want to be able to boast the natural labelling of the flavors their products contain.

The leap from synthetic

Resorting to vanilla beans unfortunately isn’t an option. Natural vanilla, almost entirely produced in Madagascar, is a labor-intensive, small-scale production that hardly covers 1% of the world’s needs, and prices have skyrocketed over the last five years on top of that. Synthetic vanillin, an exact replica of the natural molecule, has been doing the trick for several decades now — Solvay has been a pioneer in this field since the late 19th century, and remains a global leader today.

But a few years ago, Solvay developed Rhovanil® Natural, a naturally derived alternative to synthetic vanillin, to answer the market’s budding demand for natural vanilla flavors. Today, driven by customers who want more and more natural food products, that demand has taken a new dimension. “There is a definite turn in the market that started several years ago, says Corinne Duffy, Technical Marketing Manager at Solvay’s Aroma Performance which produces Rhovanil®. “Today our customers want to replace synthetic vanillin with natural vanillin or natural flavors, so our Rhovanil® Natural is where we see tremendous growth.”

Originally published on: solvay.com