Food Innovation

The winter solstice is upon us, and as the deepest winter nights fall, people in North China will be cooking dumplings. But, Fan Zhen and C.J. Henderson found a place where you can feast royally. 

Innovation in existing crossbreeding and cultivation technologies remains the future direction for China's agriculture, while transgenic technologies could mainly help resist pests or herbicides, said Han Guiqing, president of the Heilongjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

The success rate of new product launches currently remains limited: around 7 products out of 10 have disappeared from the shop shelves three years after being launched! How can this phenomenon, which isn’t a new one and which manufacturers are struggling to turn around, be explained? In fact there are several reasons for it; let us look more closely at some of them.

SIAL 2012 will open its doors to the trumpets of innovation in the SIAL Innovation area, entirely dedicated to today’s and tomorrow’s emerging food products, making a break from the past. In order to understand these innovations, the trends must be interpreted. First of all, they must be put into a more general perspective, with two key variables.

At TNS, when we look at our database of innovations tested in the last 18 months, we can see that 4 out of 5 innovations fall into the ‘line extension in the same category’ classification. In many cases, the traditional metric to assess performances of this kind of innovations are sales potential. But… is sales potential the right criteria to measure success? In our opinion, no! But why?

With a worldwide presence to respond to specific local market features, SIAL is rolled out in China, Canada, Brazil and the Middle East.

SIAL Innovation competition, showcase of the latest food and beverage exhibited in SIAL China has revealed for its 8^th  edition: 35 selected innovative products from 21 companies from 8 worldwide countries and regions.

SIAL Middle East, taking place for the second time in November 2011, is an incredible observatory of the food trends in this part of the world with its fast-changing population and consumer habits.