It was a great pleasure to have recently been at FiE in Frankfurt celebrating BENEO’s 10th Anniversary. As one of the first PR accounts I worked on, I remember (like it was yesterday!) being at FiE back in 2007 announcing the launch of BENEO following the merger of its individual business units, Orafti, Palatinit and Remy.
As I stood amid the organised chaos of FiE, I was struck by how many familiar faces were still working amongst the BENEO team, a true testament to the great ‘family’ mindset and commitment to people engrained into the business.
While many faces remain the same, the business has evolved considerably, as have we as consumers – a fact that was really brought home by a presentation on BENEO’s stand by David Jago at Mintel. It really blew my mind to think that just 10 years ago, iTunes was launched with a cd featured in the logo and the Biebmeister himself had just posted his first YouTube video!
Mintel took us on a trip back through time and went through the ten trends it announced back in 2007 and it was quite incredible just how on the money some of them were…
– Health & wellness, focused on minimizing the negatives and enhancing on the positives
– “Diet” becomes a bad word and replaced by “weight management”
– Growth in products for digestive health
– Growth in free-from products, especially gluten-free (3,700 new products were launched in 2007 vs. 35,000 now)
– A focus on products for kids to address obesity
– Expansion of Fair Trade into new category and regions (700 new products then vs. 2,500 now)
– Indian and Moroccan cuisines on trend
– Acai and goji to become the new super foods
Mintel highlighted that today, it’s all about taking a more holistic view of health and wellness, focused on balance and moderation with sportification, snacking, tech and varied diets with the rise of the flexitarian.
Looking ahead, it predicts food and drink trends including lifestyle diversity, personalisation, new consumer experiences and co-creation will be big news and given how accurate its past predictions have been, I would strongly recommend these are definitely ones to watch in the year ahead!
Beneo marks ten years, takes prebiotic marketing forward https://t.co/LCc5gPBVN1
— BENEO (@_BENEO) December 4, 2017