Potato Snacks Report: What Trends will Drive the Market?
The report will involve a comprehensive analysis of technologies that will include details of technical challenges & innovations surrounding potato processing and snacks. Information on regulatory authorities is also shared. Various products and associated guidelines will also be provided.
Potato snacks are produced worldwide and include a variety of products like chips, French fries, and flakes but are not limited to these. The smart packaging is being explored by the potato snack industry to attract more consumers.
The common problems experienced during the processing & manufacturing of potato snacks are reduction of nutrition value, presence of trans-fats and other components like acrylamide, high level of preservatives along with salt concentration, high calories and shelf-life of the snacks. Packaging of potato products could be another challenge so as to maintain the quality of chips, fresh plastic packages are being preferred and leads to the piling of non-degradable package pollution.
Challenges Associated
Understanding challenges and finding viable, cost-efficient solutions can aid in the expansion of business. After a comprehensive analysis of the potato snack industry, experts of Signicent found multiple challenges associated with the potato snack industry and packaging, some of which are discussed below.
GMO products can trigger allergic reactions in an unpredictable manner as the involvement of foreign genes in the products. As much of the products do not label the ingredients as GMO-modified.
Snacking can develop a range of health problems like elevated cholesterol levels and weight gain due to excessive calories/ oil consumption. However, most healthy products do not meet consumer demand for taste and texture.
Deep-fat frying/ conventional frying carried out under atmospheric conditions and high temperature leads to oil decomposition, greasy taste, more acrylamide formation, and reduction in nutritional & total phenolic content.
Packaging Industries are looking for alternatives to single-use plastic such as polypropylene (Non-biodegradable) for product packing as they have many negative effects on the environment.
Viable Solutions
To overcome the associated challenges following viable solutions can be opted.
On the other hand, non-GMO products, and ingredients like soy/corn do not contain GMO material or foreign genes leading to relatively fewer chances of allergic reaction. And labelling is not an issue as the ingredients are not modified.
Impregnation of natural bioactive compounds like rosemary extract, and catechins in potato chips for better taste and texture. Along with this, they act as nutrients or antioxidants providing health benefits.
Frying under reduced pressure/vacuum (at low temperature & in the absence of oxygen) provides advantages like minimizing oil oxidation, lowering acrylamide formation, reducing oil content and preserving nutritional components
Packaging industries are working towards biodegradable & compostable packaging solutions; plant-based plastics materials made up of wood pulp, corn starch, and milk protein for packing eatable products.
Each year Signicent provides consultancy to hundreds of organizations to help transform their innovations to value.
Case Studies
A highly automated potato chip vacuum frying system with a high degree of automation has gained popularity. This system has several components, for instance, a purification device along with a cleaning device. The peeling device and slicing device make the whole process very smooth. An impregnation & colour protection device with a vacuum frying device, a de-oiling device and a packaging device makes the system very unique. All these devices are incorporated into a single system for smooth processing.
Another similar case study deals with the processing of the food by focussing on less production of acrylamide. This is obtained under thermal conditions and the products like potato chips are prepared. The uniqueness of the process is that it involves vacuum frying or par-frying at ambient pressure or under vacuum conditions.
This technique involves a biodegradable bag made up of a biodegradable polymer for packaging food products such as potato chips.
Innovative Products
The market is seeing innovations in every sphere and similar innovations are happening in food processing and potato snacks. Some of the most innovative products are as follows:
Kettle Foods: USDA Organic, Non-GMO Project Verified gluten-free, with no preservatives & zero grams trans fat product
Organic Ranch Veggie Chips: These veggie chips comprise many ingredients including potato flour and starch. It also uses beetroot powder and is mentioned to be GMO-Free.
Simply Potato Chips: Simply Potato chips use the process of deep-frying under a vacuum for the manufacturing of chips.
Proper Crisps: The new packaging of the product leads it to zero waste and is made up of GMO-Free Corn-Sugars.
Regulatory
Guidelines
A non-GMO project committed to preserving and building sources of non-GMO products, educating consumers, and providing verified non-GMO choices. This project was funded in 2007. Heat-Generated Food Toxicants Identification, Characterization and Risk Minimisation (HEATOX) Project focused on health risks associated with heat-generated compounds like Acrylamide and aimed to identify innovative heating and cooking methods to minimize their formation, thereby providing safe, nutritious and high-quality foodstuffs.
Labelling Requirement: By virtue of Sections 5 and 6(10) of the Food Act B.E. 2522 (1979), the Minister of Public Health, with the suggestion by the Food Committee, hereby notifies that finished foods products like Potato chips, Extruded snack foods packages should have nutrition labelling and contain a statement like “Should Limit Consumption and exercise for a better health”.
This Regulation lays down the rules on good manufacturing practice (GMP) for the groups of materials and articles intended to come into contact with food listed in Annex I to Regulation (EC) No 1935/2004 and combinations of those materials and articles or recycled materials and articles used in those materials and articles.
Harit Mohan is Founder & CEO of Signicent LLP. Signicent deals in the area of technology, IPR (patents, trademarks and copyrights) and market research. As an IIT- Madras 2008 post graduate, research and technology has always been close to his heart. He has also done course on ‘Entrepreneurship– launching an innovative business’ from University of Maryland College Park. He has given 12 years of his career solving problems and overcoming hurdles faced by research companies and institutes. He, with his company, has been a technology and IPR consultant to over 400+ businesses globally spread across 15 countries. Harit was elected as President of TiE Chandigarh for the year 2023-2024. He has been honored with the “40 Under 40” recognition by the Times Group for his remarkable achievements and outstanding success. He was announced as World’s Leading IP Strategists 2022 by the IAM Strategy300. Harit has delivered his TEDx (Kanniyakumari) talk in 2021. He has been a torchbearer for promoting Innovation & IP in India with MHRD (Govt. of India), Cell for IPR Promotion and Management (CIPAM), Department of Science and Technology (DST)- Govt. of Rajasthan, Atal Innovation Mission (AIM)- NITI Aayog, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), TiE Chandigarh, National Research Development Corporation (NRDC), Delhi and Institution Innovation Council (IIC) at IIT Ropar. At the global stage, he is a member of PIUG & Licensing Executive Society (LES), USA.
Peter Felder
Peter Felder is registered as a European Patent Attorney and admitted to practice before the Swiss and the European Patent Office. His activities particularly comprise developing and implementing client-specific patent strategies and consultancy concerning technology transfer. His technical expertise primarily covers chemistry, materials technology and analytics, but also medicine, pharmaceutics and medical device technology. Peter Felder is a lecturer at the University of Zurich, where he has a teaching appointment at the faculty of science on protection of intellectual property in physics, chemistry and biology. He is also involved as lecturer in short courses at the Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI) in Lugano.
John Haller
John L. Haller was a San Diego patent attorney at Gordon & Rees and co-leader of the firm’s patent practice group. With more than 38 years of experience, Mr. Haller’s intellectual property practice focused on prosecution, counseling, and litigation for patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secret matters. Mr. Haller had been a registered patent attorney since 1975. With a Masters Degree in Physics, Mr. Haller was uniquely positioned to understand and apply this technological understanding to the patent prosecution and litigation process. Mr. Haller practiced IP litigation across the United States. In addition to his specific expertise in patent law, Mr. Haller had extensive experience in all aspects of intellectual property law, including, copyright law, trademark law and related trade secret and unfair competition laws. Mr. Haller’s experience in these areas similarly extended to prosecution, counseling, licensing and litigation. Prior to joining Gordon & Rees, Mr. Haller was a partner with the firm of Brown, Martin, Haller & McClain, San Diego’s first intellectual property firm. In addition, he was an adjunct professor of Intellectual Property at California Western School of Law in San Diego and was a visiting co-instructor in Intellectual Property at University of California, San Diego. Mr. Haller was the first president of the Science & Engineering Dean’s Advisory Committee for San Diego State University. Mr. Haller was selected to serve a three-year term as a Lawyer Representative for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. His duties included participation in the annual Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference and the annual District Conference of the Southern District. Mr. Haller also participated as a member of the committee to revise the local patent rules for the Southern District of California.
Riyon Harding
Riyon is a world-renowned patent strategist who develops portfolios to maximize the business value of the assets. She focuses on next-generation education technologies including augmented and virtual realities. She is also a mentor for WXR fund accelerator program, Boost VC and a licensing executive for the LOT Network. She has years of experience as a global IP consultant, innovation trainer and public speaker. Having prepared and prosecuted many patent applications, she is also a named inventor on several US Patents and applications. Riyon has over 20 years of patent portfolio development experience. She most recently was the leader of innovation at TiVo Solutions to create new products and features, which were then protected for competitive advantage or as licensable IP. She played a key role in ensuring portfolio relevance for future success. Prior to joining TiVo in 2017 she managed the Coca-Cola Freestyle team’s IP strategy and portfolio development efforts. She executed on that strategy to ensure business alignment, protection from competition and create customer value. She led the engineering teams through the inventive process, managed the patent portfolio and continuously analyzed the competitive IP landscape. Previously she worked with IBM’s Technology and IP Licensing group as an executive IP Strategist. There she worked with companies (from start-ups to fortune 100’s) and research organizations around the globe to create strategic IP programs and enable them to maximize the value of their IP. Riyon also spent several years developing an intellectual asset management software tool, Advance IP, to enable organizations to better build, manage and commercialize their IP.
