DHA baby snacks: Aussie start-up to drive domestic and foreign growth with expanded range

29-May-2019 - Last updated on 08-Sep-2021 at 13:29 GMT

DHA Balls are one of the four varieties of new products Keep It Cleaner has added to its Bambini range of baby food and snacks.

Related tags Dha Baby food Australia

Australian health and wellness firm Keep It Cleaner has launched another 12 products under its Bambini range of baby food and snacks, all of which feature DHA-enriched formulations.

Featuring DHA-enriched formulations throughout the range, Bambini will be available in Coles supermarkets across Australia by the end of May.

The company introduced Bambini to the market in 2018 with the Bambini Bar, a DHA-enriched snack bar meant for young children aged 10 months and older.

Sold in packs of five, the bars come in three flavours: oats and superberry, grains, coconut and vanilla, and banana, grains, oats and blueberries.

Now, Keep It Cleaner has added another four varieties of products to the range: DHA Balls (three flavours for children aged 1.5 years and up), Squeezie Packs (five flavours for children aged six months and up), Organic Rice Cereal (two flavours for children aged four months and up) and Organic Infant Pasta (two flavours for children aged eight months and up).

DHA directive

Established by two Australian social media influencers, Keep It Cleaner's manufactured products business is managed and operated by FMCG brand developer Metro Food Co.

Speaking to NutraIngredients-Asia, Metro Food CEO Tom Paton said: "DHA has been a well-recognised ingredient in infant formula for a long time, but this wasn't being translated into baby snacks or foods.

"We saw an opportunity to innovate in this aspect and introduce change to a category that had been pretty stagnant recently."

He added that he was confident Keep It Cleaner would be the market leader in Australia when it came to DHA-enriched baby food, as it was the first to offer such products.

"There are a few businesses globally that have started moving into this space, but none so far that have incorporated DHA throughout the entire range of their baby food products."

Minimalist manufacturing

Apart from the DHA component, Keep It Cleaner also prides itself on using 'minimalist organic ingredients'.

For instance, Bambini's two Organic Infant Pasta products are made of either corn, or corn and green peas, and are both gluten-free alternatives to regular pasta, with no added salt or sugar.

Paton said, "It's also a fantastic way to get children who are fussy about vegetables to still maintain a balanced diet."

The company also sources its ingredients largely from within Australia itself where possible, though some of the ingredients used in its products are not grown or harvested locally.

"All the products in our baby food range is manufactured in Australia, except the two pasta products, which are made in Europe."

However, he declined to reveal on where in Europe they were made.

Growing at home and abroad

At the moment, Bambini is sold in Coles supermarkets across Australia, as well as on the Coles website. Through local chemist TerryWhite Chemmart, however, the range is also available on Chinese e-commerce platform Kaola.com.

It has also made its way into select health food stores in Malaysia.

Paton said, "Now that we've launched our baby food range at Coles, we'll be looking at quite a lucrative and aggressive expansion plan throughout Australia.

"Outside of Australia, we're looking at a big Asian market strategy — the main overseas markets for us would be Malaysia, China, Singapore and Hong Kong.

"We will also be selling the Bambini range in the UAE, where we are waiting to finalise a partnership with a distributor there.

"Once we have all 15 products on the shelves, we believe we will see a lot of support for the brand's presence in the baby food category, which will bring in incremental sales for us."