FoodBev Media’s Dan Bunt speaks to Kyle Borkovec, technical manager for North America at Planteneers, winner of the prize for best technology in FoodBev’s World Plant-Based Innovation Awards 2023. Borkovec discusses its offerings at the Plant Based Word Expo North America, the company’s winning Plantbaser platform and how the company is looking to bring its solutions to new markets.

How have you found exhibiting at Plant Based World North America?

The show has been great. We’ve had some really good interest in the booth, and our products have shown really well. We showed eight different products in total.

We have a plant-based feta cheese, pepper jack, parmesan, mortadella, pepperoni, steak, salmon and chicken. So, we’ve been very, very busy – but have had very good results!

What was Planteneers’ goal at the show?

The Planteneers’ goal for the North American team here is to establish their presence in the North American market. We are very well developed in the European market, but we’re trying to break into the US. The goal here is to get our name synonymous with success in the plant-based world.

You won in FoodBev Awards’ World Plant-Based Innovation Awards 2023, in the technology category with the new Plantbaser. How did that feel for the team?

Very exciting! The group came from Germany to demo and show everybody how to use the Plantbaser. It’s a very intuitive tool that allows people to jumpstart their product development cycles.

Manufacturers can choose to customise their products online without ever having to talk to sales. They can pick different colours, different fat content, different textures, for development of all sorts of different products. And then they can choose to either get a finished sample or proof of concept, without having to do any development.

You can also order the raw materials and do some of your own testing in-house. It allows a lot of flexibility for product developers and R&D teams to show business development and marketing what’s possible. And you can start very close to the finish line, with just 20% left or so, to do some final tweaks to the formulation.

There are quite a lot of new developments already, but what does the future hold for Planteneers?

The future holds just about everything. We’re really interested in the seafood category, showcasing some of our products at the show.

High moisture extrusion is also an area of future expansion for us. We do have stabilising blends in Europe that are currently commercialised, but we need to bring them here to the US.

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