Manner

Manner uses palm oil as one of its product ingredients. Palm oil has technical and sensory properties that many other oils do not, for instance it ensures the because it offers stability of products. This is why it is an essential part of manufacturing certain products.

The original recipe of our Neapolitan wafers contained vegetable fat, and still does so today. Because previously used fats had to be hardened, something which  received negative press due to possible adverse health effects, we decided not to continue using them decades ago. The main raw materials such as cocoa and hazelnuts have not changed, because these are the main quality factors.

Coconut oil or rapeseed oil is often used as an alternative to palm oil in the confectionery industry. But both types of oil need a large surface area for their production, since the yield of the plants is much lower than that of oil palms. Therefore, it is our policy to buy palm oil through the RSPO in order to further promote sustainable cultivation (https://rspo.org/). Manner has been a member of the RSPO since 2011. The necessary certification processes for our production sites have been successfully concluded. Manner is committed to protecting the environment and biodiversity with regard to its palm oil production, even though palm oil is used in relatively small quantities in the confectionery industry worldwide (0.2% of total consumption).

The creams of our wafer products are made with a fat mixture of palm and coconut oil, strictly speaking we add coconut oil in different proportions. The ratio of both fats (coconut and palm fat) in our products is between 2:1 and 4:1 in favor of coconut fat. Given that our wafer products require a certain firmness and structure from the fat used, an admixture with palm oil is essential if we do not want to resort to hydrogenated fats or change the taste significantly.

Of course, Manner will continue to track developments on these issues to ensure that we always act in accordance with our social and environmental responsibilities. We are continuously working on a wide variety of projects relating to the use of alternative fats.

We use lecithin from soy in very small quantities (0.,0...%) for the production of our confectionery. The use of these ingredients allows a better processing, e.g. our hazelnut cream becomes more spreadable and can easily be spread onto the wafer sheets. The use of soy lecithin is mainly due to the high degree of automation of modern technology compared to the  production techniques of the past.

This raw ingredient is used in many chocolates and chocolate products because it simplifies the production of confectionery.