The plant-based market is booming but the challenges of meeting consumers’ high expectations in matching meat-based counterparts is keeping innovators busy. Working with an industry expert consultant and pulling on their own extensive knowledge of malt, Muntons is launching PlantMalt to help manufacturers achieve their best product range yet.

PlantMalt is a clean, sustainable line of malted ingredients with a wide range of grain malts, liquid malt extracts, and powdered malt extracts designed for the plant-based world. These ingredients can be used to create flavors, textures, colors, and mouthfeels that are much closer to those of meat-based alternatives.

Malt is a unique ingredient. Muntons 100% sustainable malt comes from British barley and wheat, and the natural process of malting brings out the sugars, enzymes, and amino acids in the grain. Malt adds a variety of flavors and health benefits to a wide range of foods, and it can now do the same for plant-based foods.

Richard Platt is a Senior Product Technologist at Muntons and one of the people who came up with the idea for PlantMalt.

Richard says, "As a team we fully immersed ourselves into the plant-based category, benchmarking the existing products we were able to understand the challenges that manufacturers are facing. We identified the common ingredients used and understood their functionalities, before creating our own plant-based burger, sausage and sliced deli-beef. Using our knowledge and experience of working with malt, we created a range of products that have substantial benefits in application. PlantMalt presents a range of clean-label, sustainable solutions to overcome some of the well-known challenges in the plant-based food industry."

Our grains are soaked, sprouted, and baked before being carefully processed into plant-based ingredients with clean labels. The unique malt flavors in our beer come from the Maillard reaction between the reducing sugars and plant-based amino acids that happen during the malting process. We have worked with some of the best food and drink brands in the world, so we have developed our malted ingredients, often to meet specific needs. These ingredients help manufacturers improve things like texture, color, and flavor.

Kate Dixon, Head of Marketing and Innovation at Muntons, says, "Flexitarians make up 42 percent of the plant-based market and are responsible for driving the trend* motivating brands to create plant-based products that mimic the taste of meat. Health, sustainability, and ethics are also key to many consumers. Which is why, as the world’s greenest maltster, our ethically sourced 100% sustainable range of ingredients are so well placed to help."

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*A report from Euromonitor International.