Pectin has determined and influenced UNIPEKTIN throughout its more than 80 years of company history. For example, soon after its foundation in 1936 by the Schauwecker family in Eschenz, Northern Switzerland as a trading company for pectin and fruit concentrates the establishment of pectin factories in Switzerland, Italy and France was initiated and realized.

The degree of involvement of UNIPEKTIN in these pectin ventures changed during the following decades and eventually stood back behind other hydrocolloid activities like galactomannans. However, early in the new Millenium, it was decided to resurrect the pectin business by using UNIPEKTIN’s broad experience base with countless years of experience in pectin production, standardization and application among its management, the laboratory personnel and technical sales-people as well as the international distributors, making UNIPEKTIN Ingredients AG once again a trusted source for pectin globally.

Learn about pectin application in various products, and the different VIDOPECTINE pectin types, UNIPEKTIN has to offer.

Inspired by the request and suggestions of our distributors, customers and staff we recently added a ‘Sample Request’ tab to the top navigation bar of our website. The tab opens the sample request form, which is submitted by a click on the button directly to our sample despatch team.

Our test run during the past weeks confirmed our hopes that this will make the sampling process more straightforward and with less administrative work required.

Please in future request your samples using this online sample request. It will help you receive the samples faster. We will also email you a tracking link after the parcel has been dispatched.

We also again would like to suggest to subscribe to our newsletters to always be among the first to know what’s new.

While 2020 has certainly been a year of ongoing challenges, there remains plenty to celebrate for UNIPEKTIN Ingredients AG.

Strong demand for our established and new product lines, the constant adjustment of our marketing and communications strategy, our dedicated staff willing to go the extra mile, significant improvements in production technology and capacity, and the commitment of our distribution partners, made 2020 a truly successful year for UPI.

2020 brought yet another significant increase in sales volume, of more than 40% compared to the previous year, with 2019 having been the most successful year in the company history with the turnover more than double compared to 2018.

Ever since Covid-19 came along, travelling to meet and exchange information with suppliers, customers and distributors has become near impossible. This lack of face-to-face exchange is particularly felt when it comes to critical planning and budgeting decisions for products like ours, where raw material planning is crucial. You get it right, you are fine – you get it wrong, you are in trouble.

The Locust Bean Gum market remained strongly volatile throughout 2020, and raw material prices increased further and reached new historical heights. We started to publish regular market updates on LBG on our website to make sure our distributors and customers are fully informed about the developments in our core market. These market updates obviously created confidence in UPI as one of the main LBG producers and helped existing and new customers to make the switch to our LBG and the available alternatives which we had further optimized in anticipation of the market development.

Our VIDOFIBRES range of plant fibres has quickly become one of the main pillars of our business, we added citrus and recently also carrot fibre to our sugar beet, apple and pear fibres. The VIDOFIBRES product family now complements perfectly our VIDOGUM Galactomannan product range of Locust Bean Gum, Guar Gum and Tara Gum, the VIDOPECTINE pectin product line, relaunched in 2020, the VIDOGUM PRO carob and tara proteins as well as the VIDOGLACE ice cream stabilizer product line. With these, we offer our customers a wide range of functional solutions for thickening, stabilization, gelling and texture for countless applications in the food industry.

Good information = Good decisions.

Already in 2019, we began to optimize our marketing efforts with the implementation of a new strategy centred around our website www.unipektin.ch and the News blogs as the central information hub and sales support database. Since then, our website has developed into a powerful and particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic, indispensable marketing and communication tool for the numerous new product launches we had. A large number of regular and new visitors now use our website. We have also gained a large number of subscribers to our News blogs, many of our distributors and customers alike have subscribed to receive the newsletters and blogs automatically.

In the past 15 months, we have published more than 50 News blogs covering topics like, e.g. LBG market updates, company updates, new presentations, new product launches, updated or latest information etc. about our company, markets, products, services.

We have regularly updated our product information sheets, brochures, presentations etc. and we expanded the number of downloadable product information significantly, making them quickly and directly accessible.

So, while 2020 has brought about unprecedented uncertainty, it is worth acknowledging that challenge and opportunity do tend to go hand-in-hand. And we remain very positive about the opportunities the year ahead presents.

We wish you all a safe and happy 2021.

Management and staff of UNIPEKTIN INGREDIENTS AG would like to thank our customers and distributors for their support and business in 2020.

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a safe, happy New Year and look forward to working with you again in 2021.

Our offices will be closed from 3 P.M. on December 18, we will be back on January 04, 2021. In urgent cases, please send an email using this link, and we will get back to you soonest.

Das Management und die Mitarbeiter der UNIPEKTIN INGREDIENTS AG bedanken sich bei unseren Kunden und Distributoren für Ihre Unterstützung, die Zusammenarbeit und das gemeinsame Geschäft im Jahr 2020.

Wir wünschen Ihnen frohe Weihnachten und ein sicheres, glückliches neues Jahr und freuen uns auf die Zusammenarbeit im Jahr 2021.

Unsere Büros sind vom 18.Dezember um 15 Uhr geschlossen. Wir sind wieder für Sie da am 4.Januar 2021. In dringenden Fällen können Sie uns jederzeit per e-mail erreichen, wir melden uns schnellstmöglich bei Ihnen.

We have added a new page ‘Tools and Helpful Links‘ in the ‘APPLICATIONS‘ section of our website.

Here you can find some tools, links and helpful documents which could be useful for product development work, in the laboratory and production. These are meant to be guides and should be used as starting-point.

Please check back regularly as we will add more information to this page over time.

If you have something that you would like us to add here, please get in touch with us webmaster@unipektin.ch

A small addition of VIDOFIBRES BF 5 sugar beet fibre to a coatings mixture significantly reduces the oil uptake in deep-fried chicken. In addition, it also reduces the water loss from the meat, resulting in an improved texture.

This rather impressive result is from a study made by the Faculty of Food Technology and Biotechnology at the University of Zagreb.

Just a relatively small addition of sugar beet fibre like, e.g. VIDOFIBRES BF 5 E reduces the oil uptake by almost 50% in coated/crumbed deep-fried chicken breast pieces, meaning a good potential for using less oil and reducing calories creating value for the consumer and producer.

The lower oil uptake, according to the authors, can be explained as an effect of the physical characteristics of the swelling fibre during frying, thus creating a barrier effect preventing the oil from reaching the meat.

In the same way, sugar beet fibre (e.g. VIDOFIBRES BF 5 E) also seems to have the ability to retain the natural moisture inside the meat by preventing it from evaporating through the coating, seen from the hardness tests in the study where it contributed to the improved softness of the meat.  

Application Leaflet Beverages

Because pectin originates from a fruit, it is perfectly suited for a variety of uses in fruit-based beverages. Pectin enhances the texture, appearance and mouth-feel of fruit juice based, low calorie and low juice ready–to–drink beverages. It contributes fruit-based gelation to modern jelly drinks, and it is also used to provide pulp and oil stability in flavour syrups, the basis for juice beverages. Pectin can also be used to increase the fibre content and improve the mouth-feel and palatability of high fibre drinks.

Modern juice-based beverages are often reduced in their sugar content, and sugar replacers or artificial sweeteners are added, with the result that the beverages are thin and waterlike and don’t have much mouth-feel on the palate. VIDOPECTINE VH citrus and apple pectins for beverage applications is a group of viscosity and yield-point standardized pectins designed to contribute body and viscosity (mouth-feel) to low-calorie beverages, at low usage rates of 0.05 – 0.2%. VIDOPECTINE VH also is the ideal thickener in low juice beverages or near-water drinks, to replace the body and mouth-feel lost by reducing the juice content.

Learn about pectin application in beverage products, and the different VIDOPECTINE pectin types, UNIPEKTIN has to offer.

We have updated and complemented the following of our company and product information. Please feel free to view and download these presentations, we hope they will be useful for your understanding of our services and products.

Please from now on, use these new versions as introductory and general information about the company UNIPEKTIN, our VIDOFIBRES range of functional fibres and the VIDOFIBRES CF 1525 citrus fibre, and delete the old versions that you might have on file.

Application Leaflet Confectionery

Confectionery Jellies belong to the broader class and more extensive group of gummies, gums, pastilles and jellies whose texture has changed significantly over time, from tough, less chewy textures, to increasingly tender, soft and chewier. Jellies would be described as having a short and delicate texture with a clear cut, breaking down quickly in the mouth, pretty much the opposite of what you would see in gummy candy with their slow-melting behaviour and very chewy texture.

The primary use of pectin in confectionery is in such jellies, and there are two basic groups of them, fruit flavoured jellies and neutral flavoured jellies. Within these groups, there are numerous variants, such as acidic flavoured jellies with fruit juice, fruit paste or just colour and flavour and acid, neutral flavoured jellies like Turkish Delight, chocolate-coated or sugar-coated jellies, fruit slices, aerated jellies (Zefir), cake decorations (e.g. jelly cherries), inclusions and others. Also, with the use of, or combination with other hydrocolloids or through recipe modifications, the confectionery product can vary significantly in texture. From a hard, tough, short and brittle, to a chewy or a longer and more rubbery texture. From a non-gelled and viscous filling for hard candy or chocolates to a gelled aerated, whipped confection product.

Learn about HM and LM pectin application in confectionery products, and the different commercial VIDOPECTINE pectin types, UNIPEKTIN has to offer.