Infant nutrition manufacturers must develop products that meet nutritional needs while maintaining stringent standards for safety, quality, and regulatory compliance.
At the same time, advances in oils and fats science, functionality, and formulation are opening new opportunities for nutritional innovation and product differentiation.
Navigating these demands with confidence requires more than selecting the right ingredients. Manufacturers must understand how formulation, processing, purity, and sourcing decisions interact, while accounting for differences between market requirements and growing expectations around traceability. The challenge is not simply to innovate, but to turn scientific opportunities into differentiated products that are safe, responsibly sourced, and commercially viable.
Complicating matters is the reality that any change made to address one requirement can have implications elsewhere in the production process. Manufacturers therefore need to assess ingredient selection alongside processing conditions, analytical controls, and the requirements of their target markets, particularly when developing products for multiple regions.
The aim for manufacturers is to make decisions with a clear understanding of their wider consequences, rather than treating each technical or regulatory requirement as a separate task. Through its AkoNino™ range for infant nutrition, AAK has learnt the importance in bringing a value-chain perspective to the challenges of developing and scaling a formula. This means considering how nutritional targets, ingredient performance, purity requirements, and sourcing decisions shape one another throughout product development.
When innovation meets interconnected challenges
Consider a manufacturer seeking to differentiate a new infant formula through advances in fat functionality, structure or potential nutritional benefits. Selecting and blending oils to meet the desired formula is only part of the task: the oils must also meet relevant purity requirements, retain the characteristics needed for the intended application, and deliver consistent quality. A change to the blend can therefore affect not only nutritional composition, but also how the ingredients need to be processed and assessed.
As research advances, opportunities are emerging to consider oils and fats not simply as a source of essential fatty acids, but as part of a broader nutritional system – with potential implications for digestion, functionality, and product differentiation. Translating these developments into viable formulations requires scientific understanding alongside practical development expertise.
The decisions taken at one stage change the options available at another, and two areas show this particularly clearly: purity and sourcing. The details vary between markets, but the pattern is consistent.
On purity, the choice of oils, and the way they are refined, shape what ends up in the finished food. In the European Union, for example, revised limits for 3-MCPD and glycidyl esters, contaminants that can form during refining, apply to certain foods for infants and young children, with the specific limits depending on the product concerned.¹,²
Beyond regulatory compliance, manufacturers must also consider evolving analytical capabilities, emerging contaminant concerns, and increasing consumer scrutiny. A product’s ability to differentiate through innovation ultimately depends on maintaining confidence in its quality and safety.
On sourcing, each oil in the blend has an origin that may need to be documented. EU deforestation rules, which cover commodities including oil palm, illustrate how market-access requirements can affect the information and due diligence needed across a supply chain.³
Responsible sourcing, traceability, and supply resilience therefore become part of the innovation equation – influencing not only how ingredients are sourced, but also manufacturers’ ability to deliver on product, sustainability, and commercial commitments.
Why innovation requires more than technical performance
Meeting market requirements is only part of the challenge, as an ingredient must also perform consistently in the finished product. Its specification describes defined characteristics, but performance depends on how the ingredient behaves under the manufacturer’s processing conditions.
For refined oils, the measures used to reduce processing contaminants must be considered alongside other quality attributes, including functional performance and stability. Manufacturers therefore need to evaluate analytical evidence, processing requirements, and raw-material traceability together, rather than treating each as a separate check.
Questions about analytical results, raw-material origin or processing conditions that emerge late in development can force manufacturers to revisit formulation decisions or reassess whether an ingredient is suitable for the intended market.
Resolving these issues requires input from several disciplines: formulation teams assess the ingredient’s role in the product, quality, and regulatory teams evaluate the supporting evidence, and sourcing teams confirm origin, availability, and supply continuity. Bringing these perspectives together early helps identify potential constraints before they become costly obstacles to scale-up.
This is why manufacturers need more from an ingredient partner than a specification. They also need technical input while a formula is still being developed, evidence on purity and origin, and a way to test whether a solution holds up at pilot and production scale. AAK works with infant nutrition manufacturers in this way.
This reflects an evolving role for ingredient partners: moving beyond supplying ingredients towards connecting scientific expertise, regulatory understanding, responsible sourcing, and practical execution to support confident decisions throughout product development.
AkoNino™ ingredients are tailored to a manufacturer’s nutritional and formulation requirements, with raw materials from audited and approved suppliers, and quality assurance verified by third-party auditors against international standards.⁴
AAK’s specialists work alongside manufacturers from development to launch. This means agreeing at the outset what success looks like, validating solutions under production conditions, and starting with smaller launch volumes that can scale as demand grows.⁵ Regional experts who understand local requirements support this work in different markets.
By connecting global expertise with local market understanding, this approach can help manufacturers reduce development uncertainty, navigate market-specific requirements, and translate opportunities into practical, commercially viable solutions.
From scientific opportunity to customer value
The challenges between an ingredient specification and a finished product often emerge during processing, testing or scale-up. Addressing them requires manufacturers and suppliers to work through the problem together. One AAK project illustrates this approach in practice.
Preparing for what comes next
As expectations evolve and requirements continue to differ between markets, manufacturers need to consider sourcing, processing and testing early in product development. Involving technical partners before key decisions are fixed helps identify constraints sooner and preserve options as a formula moves towards scale-up.
Looking further ahead, developments in oils and fats and lipid functionality, nutritional science, emerging contaminants, and responsible sourcing will continue to create both opportunities and new considerations for manufacturers. Understanding how these developments intersect – and anticipating their implications – will become increasingly important.
When choosing a partner, three questions matter. Reliability: can they deliver consistent quality, dependable supply, and the technical expertise to support performance? Responsibility: can they provide confidence in sourcing, quality assurance and regulatory awareness? Agility: can they work collaboratively to resolve challenges and adapt as a formula moves towards launch?
Manufacturers that ask these questions early are better placed to turn a differentiated formula into a viable product, and do so with confidence.
For AkoNino™, the three guiding principles – reliability, responsibility, and agility – underpin every solution that AAK develop and deliver, enabling manufacturers to make confident decisions, reduce risks and bring differentiated, compliant and commercially viable products to market with greater speed and certainty.
From Ingredients to Impact: Navigating Infant Nutrition Complexity with Confidence, AAK’s AkoNino™ global webinar, takes place on 24 November 2026. It brings together perspectives from innovation, regulatory and quality, and sustainable sourcing, to explore in more depth how these questions play out in practice. Register here now.
References
- European Union. Commission Regulation (EU) 2026/1825 of 29 July 2026 amending Regulation (EU) 2023/915 as regards maximum levels of 3-MCPD, 3-MCPD fatty acid esters and glycidyl fatty acid esters in certain foods.
- AGRINFO (n.d.) Maximum levels for 3-MCPD and glycidol.
- European Commission (n.d.) EU Regulation on deforestation-free products.
- AAK. AkoNino® infant nutrition lipid range.
- AAK. Co-Development approach and Co-Development process.
