The right ingredients ensure great baked goods

Published 2022-08-10

One thing is certain: without Credin, many breads and cakes would not be as fresh and tasty. With customized margarines, tasty coffee bread fillings and easy-to-use bread and cake mixers, Credin helps many bakeries to ensure a consistent and high quality of their baked goods.

Kent-Inge Ohlsson, marketing and category manager, and Josefine Kaspersson, quality engineer at Credin, talk about the development of premixes, challenges in production and the company’s future plans.

What is the story behind Credin?
– Credin was founded in 1930 in Juelsminde, Jutland, Denmark, by Herbert Schou, son of Einar Viggo Schou. “While his father ran Palsgaard A/S and pioneered the industrial production of emulsifiers (a substance that binds oil and water) for the margarine industry, Herbert started the company Credin, whose business concept was bakery ingredients in the form of premixes for cakes and bread to make life easier for bakeries,” says Kent-Inge Ohlsson.

When did Credin see the light of day in Sweden?
– Birger Norlander from Värmland came to Gothenburg as a pastry chef in the 1940s. He eventually found employment at Bakels, which produced margarine and bakery ingredients. In 1987, Birger and his sons started Norlander Food.

– Palsgaard A/S was also one of the partners. However, it wasn’t until 2019 when Norwegian Orkla Food Ingredients, a subsidiary of the Norwegian Orkla Group, acquired the company (then called Zeelandia after a previous acquisition) and we were named Credin Sweden. The Credin Group has been owned by Orkla since 2002.

What is the size of production and who are the main customers?
– At present, we have a production of around 8,000 tons in Stenkullen outside Gothenburg. Production also takes place in our sister companies’ production facilities in Poland, Denmark and Portugal.

– We sell mainly to industrial and artisan bakeries in the Nordic and Baltic countries, but also to delivery bakeries (who in turn sell to stores and hotels, among others) and store bakeries of the major food chains.

What is your best seller?
– Our largest product segment is margarine of various kinds, both in liquid and solid form. There we also have the only branded products in the bakery market – Vera, Rex and Vetelyx. The biggest products are tailor-made margarines for various industrial customers. Developing fats and other products that match the challenges and needs of individual customers is one of our great strengths and it is a growing market for us.

Do you carry out active product development?
– Absolutely, product development is very important for us. Based on insights into trends and consumer behavior, we have recently developed a completely new bread base that is unique in the market. It is high in whole grains and plant-based products, which are increasingly demanded by today’s consumers.

– They also want to know where things come from. That’s why we use storytelling, telling you that the flour, for example, is from a farm on Gotland and showing you what the farmer and his mill look like. This makes it more small-scale and genuine and gives the product ‘life’.

How important is it for you to keep track of temperature and humidity?
– For our products to work as intended, they must have a certain structure, the right melting point and, of course, be food safe. For this reason, we have to control both temperature and moisture content,” says Josefine Kaspersson.

Are there any products that are particularly sensitive?
– Our margarine production requires extra supervision. Different types of margarine have different properties and different functions in a bakery. To get the structure and consistency we want in different types of margarine, we need to have clear control over the temperature of the process.

How do you use measuring instruments in production?
– For example, we have handheld thermometers such as testo 106 and testo 926. They are convenient to use to quickly check the temperature of different samples, analyses and raw materials, as well as at certain points in our processes.

Credin also has the testo Saveris 2-T1 and testo Saveris 2-T2 remote monitoring loggers (part of the testo Saveris 2 measurement system) deployed at various points in the production process to check the temperature of the surrounding environment, as these values have a major impact on the products.

What are you focusing on for the future?
– We have a clear focus on both growth and product development. We want to grow profitably and to do so we need to be responsive and meet the needs of the bakery industry. To achieve this, we continuously hire new people in our product development department. It is the fastest growing department in our company,” says Kent-Inge Ohlsson.

Do you focus on any particular product segment?
– What we will continue to focus on is coffee bread fillings, which is a very important product group for us, along with bread bases and margarine and fat, which is by far our largest product group. In the latter segment, we have developed our own brand called Functional Fats, consisting of liquid fats that we can customize to give bread and baked goods different properties such as greater volume and longer freshness.

Finally, which pastry do you prefer to eat with a cup of coffee?
– In January and February it’s all about the semlor. It is probably the most delicious pastry in the world! The rest of the year I prefer to eat a cardamom bun. It beats the cinnamon bun by a tiny, tiny, tiny nose length.