Published in Food New Zealand April 2025.
Essential Flavours is a leading flavour house specialising in tailored flavour solutions for food, beverage and nutraceutical manufacturers in New Zealand and Australia. The family-owned and operated business creates and manufactures flavours in liquid or powder and in synthetic or natural forms.
With a catalogue of over 10,000 flavours, Essential continues to drive flavour innovation. Their 2024 launches included indulgent flavours such as churro & cream, chocolate brownie, birthday cake, and an orange liqueur.
Essential’s experienced R&D team leverages flavourist expertise, global trends and an expert understanding of the relationship between flavour, sweeteners and taste modifiers to assist customers in developing outstanding products.
Essential’s annual Flavour Trends report highlights key flavour insights shaping future product development. In 2025, food and flavour mashups will be a defining trend, with international flavour fusions in familiar formats and dessert flavours evolving into the weird and wonderful to form entirely new concepts. Flavours ripe for a mashup include cherry, chilli, churro, pistachio, limoncello, hibiscus, lavender, peach, rose, sweet corn, and maple.
In beverages, consumers are seeking refreshing and hydrating options, with rising interest in flavours like peach, tropical fruit, pomegranate-mint-lime, strawberry-basil-hibiscus, strawberry-lemon, sour cherry, blue raspberry and pineapple.
Watch out for seasonal and limited-edition flavours. Expect to see more of black forest, blackberry, Irish cream, lemon curd, honeycomb, toffee, raspberry, mixed berry, and lamington.
Authenticity in flavour is another trending movement. Consumers are increasingly being drawn to flavours with a story and rich origins, such as Hawaiian pineapple, Ghanaian cocoa, New Zealand Feijoa or Kiwifruit, Japanese matcha, Australian macadamia and Madagascan vanilla.
Based in Australia, Essential’s flavours are available to New Zealand food and beverage manufacturers exclusively through Sherratt Ingredients.
Sherratt Ingredients is a local, family-owned business providing quality specialty ingredients and bespoke solutions to food and beverage manufacturers across New Zealand.