Ice cream & frozen
Scoop, soft-serve and novelties
Flavours that read clean straight from the freezer and survive the freeze-thaw of the cabinet. Vanilla, chocolate, fruit ripples and inclusions built for cold release.
Dairy and dessert flavours, developed in Southport
Dairy and desserts for Australia and New Zealand,
made here.
VKA® Australia has spent 23 years developing dairy and dessert 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
Dairy has to taste indulgent and hold up on the line.
Dairy and dessert makers across Australia and New Zealand are reformulating. Less sugar in the custard, less fat in the ice cream, a shorter ingredient list on the tub, and a growing plant-based aisle sitting next to the dairy cabinet. Each of those shifts lands on the flavour.
Our job is to hold the indulgent profile through all of it. A reduced-sugar gelato that still tastes like gelato, a cultured yoghurt whose fruit reads true through the acidity, an oat base whose cereal note is rounded out rather than left raw. We work each one at the Southport bench against your actual recipe, not a clean reference.
Where we work
Three dairy briefs we see most.
Frozen, cultured and dessert formats each carry their own processing and shelf-life demands. Our flavourists develop and trial each at the Southport bench, under the conditions the product meets on the line.
Yoghurt & cultured
Set, stirred and drinking
Fruit and vanilla profiles that hold true through the culture's acidity and across fridge life, in dairy and plant-based bases alike.
Custards & desserts
Chilled, baked and plated
Custards, mousses, panna cotta and dessert sauces. Rich top notes and rounded body that carry through chilling, baking and the shelf life the format needs.
What we work on at the bench
Three capabilities behind a dairy brief.
Less sugar, less fat, and the cream and dairy notes that make the format work. Most dairy and dessert briefs come down to some mix of these three.
01
Sugar reduction
Dessert and dairy are sweet by design, and the sugar does more than sweeten. We hold the sweetness curve, the body and the flavour release as the sugar comes down.
Natural sweetener blends and flavour modulators, trialled against your finished product so the reduced-sugar version still tastes like the original.
Sugar reduction work02
Fat reduction
Fat carries richness and mouthfeel in ice cream, yoghurt and custard. Take it out and the format reads thin. We rebuild that richness with flavour.
Mouthfeel and creaminess held at lower fat levels, trialled in the real matrix on the application bench, not in a clean reference.
Fat reduction work03
Cream and dairy essences
The cream, butter, caramel and milk notes that sit at the heart of the category, built to hold through processing and across dairy and plant-based bases.
Drawn from the VKA essences portfolio and tuned to your base, so the dairy character reads true whether the matrix is cultured, frozen or plant-based.
See the essences portfolioBring us a brief
Send us your dairy or dessert 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.