Axiom and NNB target whey constraints with PeptiClear

Axiom Foods and NNB Nutrition are positioning a range of hydrolysed plant proteins as an additional formulation option for manufacturers facing tighter whey supply and the functional limitations that have restricted conventional plant proteins in some foods and beverages.

PeptiClear is intended to provide greater clarity, solubility, and flavour neutrality than traditional plant-protein ingredients, with target applications including functional and ready-to-drink beverages, frozen desserts, sauces, dressings, confectionery, bakery products, snacks, and other protein-enriched foods.

The partnership is entering a market where protein fortification has moved well beyond sports powders. Manufacturers are being asked to add meaningful protein levels to drinks, snacks, desserts, bakery products, and convenience foods whose original formulations were never designed to carry large quantities of protein.

That creates a technical problem as much as a nutritional one. Conventional plant proteins can bring flavour, grittiness, haze, sedimentation, colour, or changes in viscosity, particularly at the inclusion levels required for a strong front-of-pack protein claim.

Hydrolysis targets difficult applications

Hydrolysis breaks larger protein structures into smaller peptides, changing properties including solubility and processing behaviour. PeptiClear is being marketed around those differences, particularly where a developer needs a protein system for clear or lightly coloured products that cannot tolerate the opacity associated with many conventional plant proteins.

Clear beverages provide an obvious technical test. Protein has to remain dispersed through mixing, thermal processing, filling, transport, and shelf life without producing unacceptable haze, precipitation, or sediment. Acidity can make the problem harder because protein charge and solubility change with pH.

Flavour is equally important. Plant proteins can carry raw, earthy, cereal, legume, or bitter notes depending on the source and processing route, increasing the amount of flavour-masking work required. Hydrolysis itself can also introduce bitterness if peptide profiles are not controlled, so a claim of improved neutrality still needs to be demonstrated within the finished formulation.

Other applications impose different requirements. Frozen desserts need proteins to work within systems involving fat, air incorporation, freezing, water binding, and stabilisers. Bakery products expose protein to mixing and high temperatures, while sauces and dressings can depend on emulsification and viscosity rather than optical clarity.

The commercial argument is tied partly to whey. Whey protein remains a well-established ingredient because of its nutritional profile and familiar functional behaviour, but production is linked to dairy and cheesemaking before liquid whey can be separated, concentrated, and dried into the required grade.

When demand for WPC and WPI rises more rapidly than specialised processing capacity, manufacturers can face a combination of higher prices, longer lead times, and reduced spot availability. Large buyers may protect themselves with purchasing scale and long-term contracts, while smaller manufacturers developing new products can have less certainty over future cost and supply.

PeptiClear does not remove those problems by replicating whey in every application. The more credible proposition is that it gives product developers another technically different protein system, allowing them to reduce dependence on one ingredient supply chain where the formulation permits.

That distinction matters because replacing whey is rarely a one-for-one exercise. Changing protein source can affect sweetness perception, viscosity, mouthfeel, heat stability, colour, sedimentation, water binding, and amino-acid composition. The developer has to evaluate the complete product rather than assume that two ingredients carrying the same percentage of protein will perform identically.

Axiom Foods brings experience across plant-derived protein ingredients, while NNB is contributing its ingredient-development and peptide platform. The companies are also promoting DL-185, a di-leucine peptide, as a potential addition to protein formulations.

NNB cites published human research comparing di-leucine with free leucine, but those studies concern the peptide itself rather than proving a defined benefit for every finished food containing PeptiClear. Any manufacturer incorporating it would still have to work within applicable ingredient, nutrition, and health-claim requirements and establish an appropriate formulation for its market.

The more immediate industrial question is whether PeptiClear’s basic functional claims survive commercial processing. A sample that appears clear after laboratory mixing still has to remain stable after pasteurisation, hot filling, aseptic treatment, retorting, freezing, baking, or prolonged storage depending on the application.

Raw-material supply also needs consideration. Plant protein provides diversification away from dairy but does not make procurement risk disappear. Crop yields, origin, agricultural prices, freight, trade policy, and plant-protein processing capacity can all affect supply, while specifications may vary between manufacturers and production regions.

That still gives procurement teams more options if several technically acceptable proteins can be qualified. A manufacturer that can formulate around two or three suitable ingredient systems has more room to respond when one market tightens than a business whose product depends on a single specialised whey grade.

The strongest commercial case for PeptiClear will therefore be made in applications where conventional plant protein has previously failed on functionality rather than where whey already performs well and remains economically available. Clear drinks are an obvious target, but the wider list of sauces, frozen desserts, bakery, confectionery, and snacks will each require different application data.

Axiom and NNB now have to demonstrate repeatable performance at realistic protein levels and through commercial processes. If the range can retain acceptable clarity, flavour, texture, and stability in those conditions, its value will lie less in declaring the end of whey and more in giving food manufacturers another workable route through an increasingly constrained protein ingredient market.