Naturelly has been forced to halt production of its jelly pouches as retailers clamp down on products containing fruit juice.
In a recent LinkedIn post, Naturelly founder Dean Dempsey wrote: “Unfortunately, we have decided to not do another production run of the current Naturelly Jelly pouches after 10 years.
“We just no longer have the big volume customers for this product that we used to have like Aldi, Waitrose and Sainsbury’s and the MOQs [minimum order quantities] are just too high for us to continue with them at this current time,” Dempsey continued.
“For the last two years, we had been reformulating these for 12 months-plus for a large retailer but then new guidance recently came in about juice for infants and that has prevented the listing happening,” he wrote.
When approached by The Grocer, Dempsey clarified that the retailer had recently adopted the World Health Organization’s voluntary commercial babyfood and drink guidelines, published in 2020.
These guidelines stipulate that desserts for babies should not contain sweetening agents, including fruit juice. As Naturelly pouches are 60% apple juice, with other fruit juices such as blackcurrant, strawberry and raspberry, they fall foul of the recommendations.
Dempsey told The Grocer the jelly pouches had not initially been designed with babies in mind and had previously been ranged alongside other ambient jelly lines. However, when Aldi listed the product in the baby and toddler aisle two years ago, “we went from six units per store per week in Sainsbury’s to 32 per store per week in Aldi”. As a result, the brand had recognised an opportunity to target the baby and toddler market.
BBC Panorama investigation
According to Dempsey, BBC Panorama’s high-profile investigation into babyfood pouches, which aired in April, had sharpened retailers’ focus on cleaning up their baby and toddler ranges in line with the WHO’s voluntary guidelines.
The fruit juice catchall for desserts meant Naturelly’s jelly pouches – which contain 7.2g-7.5g sugar per 100g – were penalised, despite containing less than half the sugar of some of the worst offenders in BBC Panorama’s investigation. Ella’s Kitchen’s Bananas & Apples, for instance, was found to contain 19.6g of sugar.
Dempsey previously tried to reformulate Naturelly jelly pouches with fruit purée, which is permitted under WHO guidelines. However, the resulting texture was “no longer a jelly”, he said.
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