From consumer trend to product opportunity: Turning insight into food concepts

How connected product development can help manufacturers turn changing preferences and new ingredients into practical food and beverage concepts

Consumer trends can point to new opportunities, but they do not automatically become products. A flavour gaining attention, a demand for different nutritional attributes or interest in a new ingredient may all inspire a concept. But for manufacturers, the next questions are more practical: how might it work in a recipe, how will it behave during processing and what will it take to produce and package it? Answering those questions takes application expertise and a clear understanding of how formulation, processing and packaging affect one another.

This is where product development becomes a connected journey rather than a single moment of inspiration. Market and consumer insight can help shape direction; ingredient selection and formulation can turn that direction into a recipe, while trials can help determine whether the concept can move towards production.

Tetra Pak’s product development capabilities are designed to support that journey. At the Tetra Recart Food Development Centre, food experts and chefs work with manufacturers to develop new products and revitalise existing products for Tetra Recart packages. Support can include inspiration, recipe testing, sample creation and tasting sessions, bringing food expertise together with knowledge of processing and packaging.

For shelf-stable food, manufacturers can explore concepts across categories including sauces, soups, ready meals, beans, fruits and vegetables, baby food and pet food. The Centre’s pilot facility in Lund, Sweden, includes equipment for pre-processing, filling, sealing and heat treatment in retorts. A mobile test unit also allows manufacturers to conduct trials at their own facilities. This gives teams a way to assess recipes alongside the processing and packaging steps they require.

Ingredients add another layer to the process. A promising ingredient is not an opportunity on its own: its application, functionality, sourcing and fit with the intended formulation all matter. Tetra Pak’s Ingredients Services focus on these questions, supporting manufacturers as they consider ingredient options and how they may work in specific products. Support can extend to ingredient sourcing through Tetra Pak’s network of specialised ingredient suppliers, helping customers address availability and consistency alongside formulation.

A fava bean frozen dessert concept developed and validated by Tetra Pak offers one example. Its relatively neutral flavour provides a base for different flavours, illustrating how an ingredient’s characteristics can inform a product concept. The next step is to make that concept relevant to a manufacturer’s own portfolio and consumers.

These questions also connect with New Food, where biomass and precision fermentation create further possibilities for ingredients and product development. Ingredients Services can support their application and formulation, while New Food capabilities address the technologies and processes needed to produce them at scale.

Tetra Pak’s New Food capabilities combine biotechnology expertise with experience in industrial-scale food production. Its New Food Technology Development Centre supports the development of fermentation-based products, while its work in precision fermentation addresses the processing solutions needed to produce precision fermentation-derived ingredients at scale. The Centre enables customers to test scale-up methods, validate production processes and receive post-trial analysis and recommendations for desired characteristics, volumes and costs. Fermentation trial volumes of 20, 200 and 1,000 litres support this work.

For manufacturers, the value of connected product development lies in making better-informed decisions: which concepts to pursue, which formulations to refine and which production questions to resolve. Bringing consumer understanding, ingredient expertise, processing and packaging together early can help establish a clearer route towards commercialisation.

These capabilities come together at the Culinary Experience Hub at Gulfood Manufacturing 2026, where Tetra Recart, Ingredients and New Food move from discussion into tangible product experiences.

Visit Tetra Pak’s stand A2-42 in Hall 2 at Dubai World Trade Centre from November 3 to 5, 2026. Find out more here.

Konstantin Kolesnik is the Managing Director of Tetra Pak Arabia Area.