Sugar Reduction · Southport, Queensland
Send us your sugar-reduction brief. The VKA® Australia team at Southport develops the flavour that keeps a lower-sugar product worth drinking, with the documentation a Health Star Rating front-of-pack claim needs. No contract to start.
Read in one Australian business day, by a real flavourist at the Southport bench. No contract to start.
What the label is fighting
Pulling sugar out of a recipe pulls more than sweetness out with it. Body goes. Mouthfeel goes. The acid you used to balance against the sugar suddenly reads sharp. The product that scored well at full sugar now scores thin, and the reformulation that was meant to lift the Health Star Rating ends up sitting on the shelf next to the original.
VKA Australia formulates the flavour side of that reformulation at the Southport bench. We rebuild the sweetness profile, hold the body where the sugar used to carry it, and balance the acid against the new matrix so the lower-sugar version tastes like a finished product, not a stripped-back one. Every formulation ships with documentation aligned to the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code, ready for the front-of-pack and added-sugars context buyers are reading on the label now.
AU and NZ front-of-pack labelling. Our documentation supports the claim.
Reviewing added-sugars labelling on packaged food across Australia and New Zealand.
Twenty-three years developing flavours at the Southport bench, with five decades of group flavour science behind us.
How we work the brief
Pulling sugar out is the easy part. Holding the drink together once it is out is the work.
We formulate the flavour to bring the sweet signal forward at first taste, so a lower-sugar drink does not read flat at the front. The brief tells us where in the sip the sweetness needs to land, and we build to that.
High-intensity sweeteners often carry a metallic edge, a bitter back-end or a finish that hangs around. We balance the flavour to cover those off-notes so the sweetness reads clean. The sweetener is on the ingredient list. It does not need to be on the palate.
Sugar is half the body of a soft drink. When it goes, the body goes with it. We build the flavour to hold the weight in the middle of the sip and to let go cleanly at the back, so the drink finishes the way the original did.
Every sugar-reduction flavour goes through the application kitchen beside the bench before it ships. A soft drink in soft drink. A yoghurt in yoghurt. A bakery system in a baked crumb. If it does not taste right in the finished product, it goes back to the bench.
Categories we work on
Sugar reduction reads differently in a carbonated soft drink, a yoghurt, a chocolate or a sauce. Each brief gets the time on the application bench it needs.
Send us your brief
Tell us the product, the sugar level you need to land at, and the front-of-pack claim you are working toward. A real flavourist on the VKA Australia team at Southport will read it inside one Australian business day, scope a fit and reply. Flavour for Australia has to be developed and made in Australia. Twenty-three years at the Southport site.
Read in one Australian business day, by a real flavourist at the Southport bench. No contract to start.
