Free-from specialist Alpro has confirmed it will not be merging its soya and nut production facilities, months after plans for the move led to criticism from allergy campaigners.
Last year, Alpro began putting a “may contain traces of almond and hazelnuts” label on its plant-based products. The company, owned by WhiteWave Foods, said the label gave consumers “advance warning of the integration of products containing almonds and hazelnuts into its UK, Belgium and France production facilities by the end of 2014”.
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The production of one-litre junior soya milk, a product targeted at children, was set to be kept separate.
However, the overall plan sparked criticism from a campaign group called AlproSOS, which launched a social media campaign pushing for Alpro to keep all its soya products nut free.
Yesterday (19 August), Alpro revealed recent growth meant it had decided it could “afford dedicated production lines”.
“As part of a major investment programme in its facilities, Alpro will arrange its current production lines to be dedicated to producing soya, rice and oat drinks or almond, hazelnut and coconut drinks. Any avoidable risk of cross contamination is thus excluded, which means that the warning can be removed from the soya, rice and oat drinks as well as the plant-based alternatives to cream and desserts,” the firm said.
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By GlobalDataAsked why the decision had been made to keep lines separate, the spokesperson said: “We always listen to our consumers. Alpro is a fast-growing business and this means we were able to review our investment programme. In this case it meant that we could respond to the needs of our allergic consumers for dedicated production lines for several of our products.”
