By Melissa Charry Portfolio & Business Growth Professional
For over 30 years, the annual PLMA (Private Label Manufacturing Association) trade show has been the most important event in the United States where retailers and industry gather information and meet suppliers to develop their private brands. In this year’s event, more than 1500 companies from 40 countries will exhibit their products and services, and it will include 25 international pavilions.
We have participated in this event for over five years, but this time we decided to present ourselves somewhat differently, starting with our very stand. This year, we have a more experiential stand, where visitors will be able to experience the Luker Chocolate Market, a space where they can learn about our 110 years of experience as master chocolatiers taken to the world of some of the food megatrends: the premium, ethical, and healthy world.
This year we decided to go further and present ourselves at the New Product Expo, a platform where only some of the participating companies will be able to exhibit their latest innovations in products and packaging. The products will be exhibited at the Idea SuperMarket, a part of the fair that shows what supermarkets, hypermarkets and retailers of all kinds are doing with their brands. The products that will be shown here are selected based on their level of innovation determined by a jury. A couple of weeks after we submitted our ideas, we received the great news of having had two of our innovations selected: Beau Cao and Protein Pud.
Today we are going to tell you what Beau Cao is all about. Beau Cao is a product developed from VitalCao, a line of Luker Chocolate’s functional ingredients offering cocoa powders with the best benefits derived from cocoa. After 11 years of intense research and thanks to all the possibilities afforded by being present throughout our chocolate value chain, from the cocoa bean to the final product, we developed a unique production method, patent-pending, where we control post-harvest practices (fermentation and drying) and the industrial process to obtain a large number of antioxidants from cocoa. All this has resulted in a portfolio of natural products that provide health benefits in the modern era.
One of VitalCao’s strongest innovations is its ability to protect the body’s cells from UV rays. The antioxidant properties of VitalCao prevent the formation of free radicals triggered by exposure to ultraviolet rays. Based on the benefits of VitalCao and understanding that beauty is a process that must be cultivated from the inside out, at Luker Chocolate we decided to launch Beau Cao, a product that is both indulgent and cares for your skin by reconstituting it from within.
Beau Cao’s formula helps protect cells up to 60% more than regular chocolate, which means your body is protected from the sun’s rays from within. It also helps to reduce inflammation that may occur in skin tissues up to 26% more than regular chocolate.
At Luker Chocolate, we conducted a medical study with Ikemia IUCT (a Spanish high-tech business group aimed at developing and exploiting new products) to scientifically prove the benefits of daily consumption of Beau Cao. For a year, 10 healthy subjects, with an average age of 35.4 years and skin type II (according to the FitzPatrick scale), consumed 4 to 6 grams of VitalCao daily. We then exposed 1×1 cm areas of their untanned skin on the inner side of the forearm to increasing doses of simulated solar radiation (SSR, model 601 multiport solar simulator, sunlight, Glenside, PA). The results showed that there was a significant increase in the skin’s photoprotective effect, which is directly related to the product’s high antioxidant activity.
Clinical studies made by our research and development department, prove that the 45% cocoa Beau Cao has 75% more flavanols (components found in some foods that help the body protect itself from damage caused by oxidising agents such as ultraviolet rays, environmental pollution, chemicals in food, etc.) than a regular milk chocolate with the same cocoa content. The 58% and 70% cocoa content versions (the 70% one is the one we will present at PLMA) contain 57% and 47% more flavanols respectively than a regular chocolate.
We are proud to launch our first innovation in the beauty sector and to participate in PLMA’s Supermarket Idea.
If you are interested in Beau Cao, join us; this innovation could be yours and part of your private label portfolio. If you want to learn more about the product, come to the Luker Chocolate Market to be held in the North Hall, stand F3011, from November 17 to 19 at the Rosemont Convention Centre in Chicago.
