Food & Drink Business, September 2001

There’s an old saying: If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.

Unfortunately, in the business of prepared foods and beverages, things are not always so plain and simple. A duck (or more commonly, a biscuit, a worcestershire sauce, or an ale) does not, at the end of the preparation process, always look like what our mind’s eye tells us it should look like.

And, even if the product meets all of the other sensory criteria for ‘biscuit-ness’, or ’sauce-ness’, or ‘ale-ness’ (in that it smells, feels, and tastes like that certain thing), if it fails to meet appearance expectations, then the product becomes difficult to sell to the consumer.

D.D. Williamson have successfully addressed the need for color enhancement in prepared foods and beverages since 1865. Today they are the industry leaders in markets throughout the world. D.D. Williamson are the world’s largest manufacturers of caramel color with seven plants on five continents to serve their primary customers - food and beverage processors.

D.D Williamson produce caramel color for leading global brand names in beverages, baked goods, soups, sauces, dry mixes, and pharmaceuticals. Each day, more than one billion servings of foods and beverages containing D.D. Williamson caramel color are consumed around the world.

The job of caramel color is simple: to create visual appeal in any food or beverage. The addition of caramel color effectively solves a basic communications problem, in that it causes the messages sent from the eye to the palate to conform to (and agree with) the messages generated by other sensory data about the product, including smell, texture, and taste.

The D.D. Williamson mission is rather more complex: to meet or exceed their customers, expectations by continually improving their processes, products, and services. An aggressive research and development programme, combined with use of the latest advances in food technology, help the company achieve this mission. D.D. Williamson have lef the industry in developing global ingredient specifications and analytical techniques such as GC-MS for flavor.

Perhaps more important to fulfillment of the mission, however, is the firm’s realization that the selection of the proper caramel color for a specific product is both a science and an art. For this reason, D.D. Williamson assist each customer in selecting the one color formulation that will ensure consistent and reliable delivery of the optimal message from eye to palate.

D.D. Williamson produce more than 50 liquid and 12 powdered types of caramel color. Most of these colors belong to one of the following four - major product categories:

Beverages - for use in soft drinks, beers and ales, spirits and liqueurs, fruit drinks, coffees, and teas
Sauces, Soups, and Seasonings - including gravies, vinegar, soups and soup mixes, soy sauces, dry seasonings, spice blends, and rice mixes
Baking - for goods such as frozen and refrigerated dough, biscuits, cakes and snack cakes, ice cream cones, breads, bagels, muffins, and ready-to-use dry mixes, pre-mixes and concentrates
Pet Foods - dry extruded kibbles, web or canned pet foods, treats and snacks

D.D. Williamson also serve additional food applications such as meats and meat analogues (vegetarian entrees, turkey and beef jerkies, sausage casings), snacks and cereals (caramel popcorns, granola and energy bars), and confectionery products (brown sugars, black licorices), as well as non-food applications such as cosmetics, shampoos, and mouthwashes.

D.D Williamson have manufacturing locations in Kentucky, USA; California, USA; Puerto Rico; Ireland; China; Swaziland, Africa; and Brazil.