Headquartered in Bengaluru, Stonefield Flavours is today the fastest-growing Indian multinational flavor company. With a vision to shape the future of taste, Stonefield enables customers to serve delightful tastes every time. With a research lab in Bangalore, a Creation lab in Chennai, and sales offices across India, the company offers its strong capabilities in flavor creation, creative applications, innovative taste solutions, and exceptional customer service to help manufacturers get the most out of their products.

Neena Tom, technical director, Stonefield talked about the idea behind building the company, “There are a lot of Indian companies in every food segment. However, for flavors, it has been always European or American companies that have dominated the space. It has been our dream to build a company that creates world-class flavors from India. And here we are, over the last few years, the quality of our flavors and the customer-centric solutions we brought to the market helped us in becoming one of the best in the industry.”

Offering dairy, at its tastiest best

Dairy continues to be a highly used ingredient in food and beverages. From cookies to crackers, chocolates, and flavored milk, most of the popular food products have dairy as a key ingredient. However, due to the soaring prices of dairy, manufacturers are forced to include cost-effective ingredients, which interfere with the overall taste of the product. At a time when consumers are extremely demanding about the quality and taste of products, manufacturers should be in real jeopardy.

Recognizing this need of the market, Stonefield’s team came up with a range of dairy boosters using real dairy ingredients that have up to 30 times more impact than their traditional counterparts. This portfolio which is called DairyONE is the most successful tech-driven solution from the company and has already found its place in some of the top-selling biscuits, milkshakes, chocolates, and morech of the country and beyond.

Talking about the product, Neena says “DairyONE celebrates the authentic, melt-in-mouth tastes of premium dairy. Designed to achieve the exact taste and lingering mouthfeel of fine dairy in products that have dairy as an ingredient, DairyONE can deliver up to 30 times the flavor strength of real dairy. With our centuries-strong expertise in crafting the finest dairy flavors, we created DairyONE for manufacturers who aren’t willing to compromise on taste!”

To grow the DairyONE portfolio even further, the company recently launched the country’s largest dairy flavor technology plant in Bangalore. Talking about the launch, Neena said, “We have enhanced our volumes and put technologies to develop more products under the DairyONE line. For instance, we are getting a lot of interest in coming up with different variants of cheese flavors in line with consumers’ interest to experiment more with dairy flavors. Considering the huge opportunity dairy flavors have in the market, we will be expanding our portfolio to cover more nuances of dairy. DairyONE currently has under its portfolio flavors ranging from butter, cheese, cream, yogurt, sour cream, and milk.

“At Stonefield, we always believe in creating flavors that are closest to nature,” says Neena. Talking about the DairyONE flavor creation process, she explained, “We leverage the team’s combined expertise in the dairy category, to create authentic dairy flavors from natural ingredients. Dairy substrates undergo various biochemical reactions to create concentrated flavor systems that lend impactful dairy notes to products.” This signature dairy tech innovation from Stonefield Flavours uses only high-quality dairy ingredients that are locally sourced, thus making it a proudly made-in-India product. The DairyONE range can be used to create products that taste exceptionally well, even while keeping the recipe costs low.  Some key features and benefits of the DairyONE range include:

·  Natural flavors

· Heat stability

· Source of dairy

·  Flavor enhancement

· Cost reduction

·  Longer shelf life

·  Offers consistent quality

Commenting on India’s FMCG sector, she said, “Dairy as a flavor has the largest potential as of now. For instance, biscuits with dairy flavors continue to be the largest in the category. Even in snacks, a lot of interest is being generated around cheese and cream. While dairy flavors have always enjoyed popularity, further to the pandemic, we see the demand is growing manifold. As a future-forward company, we are fully preparing ourselves to cater to the rising demand for quality dairy flavors.”

Fostering innovation

Stonefield is redefining how flavor is presented in food and beverages. With an application-centric business model, the company believes in inspiring change and delighting lives with creativity at the heart of everything it does. The company's value proposition centers on a distinctly creative approach to applications, a team that is always responsive and prepared with solutions to take on flavor challenges, and top industry expertise to add more value to the end product for the customers.

Stonefield has built a reputable name in the industry by providing its customers with exceptional, value-driven solutions, thanks to the leadership of the best-in-class application professionals in the industry in the bakery, beverage, confectionery, dairy, and savory departments.

Research and development at Stonefield go beyond just coming up with new flavors. The applications are also important, as every time a flavor is created, the finished product is imagined. The company's team is motivated to develop distinctive flavors that satisfy every need. It collaborates throughout the entire process, from ideation to development, to make sure the final product lives up to expectations.

At Stonefield, flavor creation happens both reactively and proactively in state-of-the-art labs. The well-equipped labs at Stonefield facilitate complex flavor creation, where the flavors are developed in all their nuanced glory and applications are tested.

Taste the future

Talking about the flavor market in India, Neena said that the opportunities in the flavor segment are going up. She added that to make any tasty food product affordable, flavors are needed. Artisanal products can be created using plenty of butter and milk. But if it is not affordable, most Indian consumers cannot buy it. Thus, Stonefield’s objective is to create exceptionally tasting products for the masses along with delivering for the premium segment.

Stonefield strives to create flavors that are for today and all the tomorrows. The company has an equity partnership with Exter - B.V., The Netherlands, which has decades of expertise in creating authentic, natural savory tastes. This further enhances the company’s technical capabilities in savory taste and global reach for the company.

Talking about the future, Neena said, “We are also looking at different vegan categories like plant-based beverages since it has a lot of flavor requirement for base masking and taste. We already provide flavors for plant-based meat to companies and are developing our strengths further on that as well.”

Stonefield currently has businesses in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, GCC & Africa. The taste solutions are predominantly offered to bakeries, beverages (alcoholic and non-alcoholic), confectionery, savory, dips, and sauces. The company is already doing business with all the top FMCG companies in the country and aspires to be partnered with many more globally.