Flour products occupy a significant place (about 50%) in the market of confectionery products, which are in steady demand among all segments of the population with different income levels.
Over the past few years, the production of flour and confectionery products has been slowly declining.
Traditional classic confectionery products continue to be in demand, the popularity of innovative products is also growing.
According to many experts, in today’s highly competitive market conditions, the surest way to become more successful is to develop and produce high-margin innovative products. Today, the production of traditional assortment is ensured by high production costs, while the production of innovative products makes greater use of the latest technologies in the field of raw materials and equipment, which ensures low production costs and attracts the consumer, as well as has a significant potential for branding, marketing and, ultimately, profit. To create innovative products, innovative ingredients are needed first.
It is important for a manufacturer to consider many factors when developing innovative products, as people’s needs depend on the stage of life they are living, their culture and environment, and what foods are currently available to them. It is also relevant that the same product may have different degrees of innovation for different consumers, i.e. interest in nutritional elements and health supplements differs depending on the consumer group.
In an environment of rapidly increasing competition and inflation, with constantly rising energy costs and a shortage of skilled labor, innovation is needed by businesses “like air”. It is the only resource unique to any enterprise that is extremely difficult for competitors to copy. It is innovation that can help companies improve their competitiveness.
The consumer is constantly offered a wide range of goods: products are rapidly changing, improving. Without utilizing the innovative potential, the manufacturer dooms itself to inevitable lagging behind. This means that it is necessary to keep up with modern technologies. It is necessary to constantly improve equipment, to introduce innovations, including in confectionery production.
But unfortunately innovative technologies are mainly acceptable to large confectionery enterprises struggling to develop new territories of the “market”. They use all kinds of automation, reducing jobs, the latest ingredients that accelerate the cooking process and increase the period of product realization.
These methods are practically not acceptable to small confectioneries, as they do not set the task of distributing their products in bulk, and realize them locally. Therefore, they rely on traditional methods with minimal mechanization and the use of all kinds of modern ingredients (mixtures). This allows them to be original, mobile in assortment, and to keep the quality of products at a high level.