Gummies & jellies
Pectin, gelatine and starch
Bright fruit that survives the acid and the set, with a clean release and a clean finish. Tuned to pectin, gelatine or starch bases.
Confectionery flavours, developed in Southport
Sweets for Australia and New Zealand,
made here.
VKA® Australia has spent 23 years developing confectionery flavours for makers across the Tasman. The bench, the application kitchen and the manufacturing plant sit at one Southport site, so a sample lands days, not months, after the brief.
The brief, in plain terms
High heat, high sugar, a clean finish.
Confectionery is a hard place for a flavour to live. Boiled sweets are cooked past 140 degrees, gummies set in an acidic gel, and chocolate carries everything through fat. The flavour has to come through the process intact and finish clean, with no lingering off-note.
We develop confectionery flavours against the real cook and the real base. Fruit, mint, cola, cream and native notes are trialled through your temperature, your acid and your sugar system at the Southport bench, so the sample you sign off has already met the conditions the sweet will face.
Where we work
Three confectionery briefs we see most.
Gummies, chocolate and boiled sweets each cook and set differently. Our flavourists develop and trial each at the Southport bench, under the conditions the product meets on the line.
Chocolate & compound
Moulded, coated and filled
Flavours that carry cleanly through cocoa butter and compound fats. Mint, fruit, caramel and nut notes balanced against the chocolate.
Hard-boiled & chewy
Lollies, toffees and chews
Top notes built to survive a high-temperature cook and hold through a long ambient shelf, from classic fruit to cola and cream soda.
What we work on at the bench
Three capabilities behind a confectionery brief.
Flavour that survives the cook, colour that pulls off the shelf, and sugar that comes down without losing the sweet. Most confectionery briefs come down to these three.
01
Heat-stable flavours
A boiled sweet is cooked well past the point where most top notes break down. We build flavours to carry more of their character through the cook rather than dosing harder to mask the loss.
Our EssenceLock work helps carry the volatile notes through high-temperature processing, so more of the design survives the cook.
How EssenceLock works02
Natural colours
Confectionery sells on colour as much as taste. Bright colour with the shelf-stability the format needs, that works within your back-of-pack requirements.
Natural colours selected for stability in the acidic, high-sugar systems that gummies and boiled sweets use, drawn from the VKA colour portfolio.
See the colour portfolio03
Sugar reduction
Sugar is most of a sweet, by weight and by structure. We hold the sweetness and the flavour release as it comes down, against the real base.
Natural sweetener blends and flavour modulators, trialled in your actual gel or cook so the reduced-sugar version still reads as a treat.
Sugar reduction workBring us a brief
Send us your confectionery brief.
Tell us the format, the base and what the brief has to do. We will read it inside one Australian business day, sit with our flavourists, and come back with a sample. No contract to start.
Read in one Australian business day. No contract to start.