Making gummies and beverages better: Bartek highlights its Pecmate and EasyAcid malic acid ingredients: 2022 SupplySide West Report

Photo © AdobeStock.com/ Pavlo

Bartek Ingredients (Stoney Creek, ON, Canada) highlighted its Pecmate, Pecmate K, and EasyAcid malic acid ingredients at November’s SupplySide West trade show in Las Vegas. Pecmate improves gummy production and texture, while EasyAcid makes beverage production more convenient.

Pecmate

Pectin is increasingly popular as a plant-based alternative to gelatin in gummies. Working with pectin, however, has its challenges.

"Pectin as a gelling agent requires a different set of parameters in order to set—temperature being one, the amount of solids that you have in solution being a second one, and most importantly pH,” explained Mohammed Emami, Bartek’s director of marketing and business development, at SupplySide West. "Managing the pH is the challenging part.”

He continued: “The pH level needs to be low enough for pectin to gel. The way pectin molecules are, they need to be formed at this lower pH so they can form the matrix. If it’s not acidic enough, it just doesn’t form the gel.”

Bartek’s solution for formulators has been its Pecmate pectin enhancer, which is a buffered salt “that helps with pectin formulation,” Emami said. “It literally makes the formulation smoother."

Pecmate is a sodium hydrogen malate. But for companies that don’t want sodium on the label, Bartek now offers a sodium-free, potassium-based version called Pecmate K, which Emami said is just as effective as Pecmate. Because Pecmate K’s solubility is higher, “we recommend that when companies cook the pectin, they add it at the end of the process,” he advised.

EasyAcid Malic Acid

Another of the company’s highlights at SupplySide West was its EasyAcid malic acid ingredient for beverage formulating. Many companies include malic acid as an ingredient in powdered form, which can challenging. “They have to dissolve it, they have to deal with the dust, they have to basically deal with weighing the right amount of malic acid, putting it into the solution. That could create errors and could be cumbersome on their end,” said Emami.

To avoid this, Bartek introduced EasyAcid, which is a liquid-based malic acid ingredient available in different solids levels. “Typically, we sell it at 50%, which is what most customers want,” he said. “It comes in these IBC totes, which are connected to a metering pump, so it’s easy for customers to literally just mix it in uniformly without the hassle of dealing with powder.”