AAK Annual Report 2020

Dairy AAK Annual Report 2020 20 In light of the pandemic, consumers have become even more aware of health and environment. This has resulted in a switch to plant-based foods and beverages, making it the fastest-growing retail cate- gory in key markets across the world. During the year, the segment continued to show strong growth. We have accelerated our efforts to support the drive for healthier, more sustainable, and tastier plant-based foods by investing in a Global Plant-based Center of Excellence in the Netherlands, joining the MISTA innovation platform in USA, and partnering with Good Food Institute in India. Solutions During 2020, we have enhanced our range of plant- based solutions and our Customer Innovation teams across the world have worked with each other and with external partners to expand and improve our product portfolio. We offer solutions for all major sub-segments within Plant-based Foods, such as plant-based burgers, sausages, frozen desserts and ice cream, and a wide range of cheeses, milk drinks and whipped toppings. Trends Today’s conscious consumers are ever more focused on sourcing practices, sustainability, climate matters, animal welfare, and ingredient labeling. Our umbrella brand AkoPlanet™ is developed to fulfil these expec- tations. The consciousness of consumers has been augmented by the pandemic with more people shopping groceries on the internet, resulting in product switching and new products based on online habits and preferences. A strong first quarter was followed by a second one that was severely impacted by the effects from the pandemic. We saw improvements during the second half of the year, particularly for our European business. However, our other regions have experienced a slower comeback. Solutions We develop and provide the whole dairy and ice cream segment with solutions for use in cheese, whipped toppings, yellow fats, fermented milk products, milk drinks, and coffee whitener. Our solutions are devel- oped to meet customer requirements for health, sustainability, functionality, and process efficiency and may be customized to meet specific consumer demands. Trends The major dairy trends are healthy, sustainable and more cost-effective solutions. The dairy industry is also very much impacted by the rise of conscious consumers who want to include more sustainable, vegetable-based food in their diets. New products Through our co-development approach, our Customer Innovation team has during the year developed a variety of new products globally. We maintain our strong commitment to the regional markets to develop solutions supporting our customers’ needs for new products, aiming at cost optimizations or meeting con- sumer demands for sustainably sourced raw materials. Future growth By maintaining our strong focus on speciality and semi-speciality solutions, we will continue to help our customers to launch new and improved consumer products in line with market trends. We therefore expect our Dairy segment, post-Covid, to pick up on its growth journey. Plant-based Foods