Salt intake is higher than recommended for most people, and meat and meat products play a significant role in overall consumption. Acknowledging this challenge, HKFoods decided to act by introducing innovative approaches to reduce salt while maintaining familiar taste profiles.
HKFoods developed a new flavoured salt solution that enables a salt reduction of up to 25% in many of its branded products without affecting taste. As part of this approach, a portion of the regular salt has been replaced with flavoured salt consisting of potassium chloride and flavourings, with no sodium in the flavoured salt component.
Extensive expert and consumer testing was carried out to ensure that the familiar taste of the products remained unchanged. Following this development, the first 鈥渓ess salt鈥� products under the and brands were launched in January 2025.
To date, nearly 100 high鈥憊olume products have been renovated and innovated using this approach, including cold cuts, sausages, poultry, and red meat products. These changes were implemented without any increase in product prices.
Since the introduction of the flavoured salt innovation, HKFoods鈥� market share has grown in the cold cuts category and has remained stable in the poultry and red meat categories. The reformulation effort is estimated to result in 65,000 kg less salt in the diets of Finnish consumers during 2025.
HKFoods鈥� journey towards offering less鈥憇alt options continues, with new launches planned during 2026.
