We live in an accelerating world. With so much change swirling around us, it can feel like time is being compressed. It’s disorienting. It’s destabilizing. And it’s full of opportunities to shape what comes next.
When we hear from partners about the challenges they’re facing and forecasting in the coming years, the importance of our work only becomes clearer. Savor is setting out to create foundational change within our food system with fats and oils that secure critical supply chains and drastically decrease strain on the planet. In the interest of impact, we want to share some of our plans to connect with as many like-minded people as possible.
Sources:
Cocoa Butter, Palm Kernel, and Coconut Oil Prices – World Bank Commodity Markets Review
Butter – FAO, United Nations Butter Price Index
Savor is an ingredient company. We re-discovered an ancient process that creates sustainable fatty acids and built a platform that produces an array of fat- and oil-based ingredients for applications ranging from indulgent foods to functional ingredients and personal care and beauty products. Within this broad space of opportunity, our first ingredients are focused on the indulgence category.
The confectionery and baking industries consume hundreds of thousands of tons of fats and oils each year and are collectively worth more than a trillion dollars globally. Increasingly, supply chains that are the lifeblood of these industries are under pressure from climate change and geopolitical instability. The last five years have seen historic price shocks and sustained volatility in global commodity prices, particularly for cocoa butter and palm oil. Cocoa butter prices spiked more than 400% in a 12-month period and remain elevated due to ongoing climate challenges for producers in West Africa[1]. Meanwhile, global demand for palm oil from food producers continues to grow while a convergence of factors including aging plantations, biofuel mandates, and EU deforestation rules further drive up palm oil prices[2].
Savor’s platform empowers our partners to tap into a supply chain of sustainable fats and oils that offers resilience and versatility across different brands and applications. This represents a complete paradigm shift in how we sustain ourselves. Traditionally the only way to increase supplies of fats and oils was a cycle of deforesting, planting, harvesting, and processing. Now we’re creating a future where an oil supplier can increase supply without the land, water, and fertilizer inputs of agriculture.
We started out by developing two flagship ingredients: a milkfat and a cocoa butter replacement. Additionally, we formulated the milkfat alternative into a ready-to-use, drop-in butter replacement, which has been crucial for demonstrating use cases and sparking interest with consumers.We offer our growing portfolio of products to operations along the value chain that rely on butter, milkfat, and cocoa butter. These partners typically transform Savor ingredients to make croissants, cookies, whipping cream, coatings, spreads, fillings, bread, chocolate treats, and more. Complementing conventional fats with Savor fats allows food producers to significantly strengthen supply chains, while unlocking product performance advantages that are key differentiators in highly competitive markets. All this while offering consumers a final product made with non-GMO, allergen-free fats that have a strong sustainability story.
With larger partners specializing in consumer packaged goods, we start out by supplying their operations with our core fats and eventually progress to developing bespoke solutions tailored to specialized needs. For example, if a client needs a cocoa butter substitute that is snappier than palm oil, we can adjust the fat formulation to fill that need. It’s key to note that in any application, Savor fats and oils function as complementary ingredients to agricultural fats and oils in foods that people already love. Rather than introducing a new product line, we’re slotting into familiar formats–from premium baked goods to chocolate bars and other consumer packaged goods lining grocery store aisles.
Our path to growth with food manufacturing partners is guided by the belief that every food choice is a cultural choice. Driving large-scale food system change means sparking cultural change, and to do this we’re partnering directly with chefs and bakers who are ambassadors of change in the food space. These culinary partners are attuned to both the nuances of sustainable sourcing and the evolution of eating. Getting our products in their hands from the get-go has allowed us to embed our innovation in some of the most respected kitchens in the country, tapping into deep culinary knowledge as we create ingredients that address critical food system challenges and perform at the highest level.
In a world that’s fast and getting faster, we’re embracing change by doing more with less. More flavor, more food security, and more connection to consumers’ evolving needs. All with significantly less strain on our planet.
