Palatinit is taking heart from market data indicating strong potential for the sugar-free confectionery market in Europe, as it steps out of a diet and diabetic-only niche and into the mainstream.

The Mannheim, Germany-based company supplies a low-calorie sugar replacer called Isomalt to sugar-free confectionery market. It is drawing on data supplied by ACNeilsen and Euromonitor as evidence that this area is ripe for serious development.

Head of marketing Claudia Meissner told FoodNavigator.com that although sugar-free confectionery has seen ups and downs on a year-by-year basis, the data "show sugar-free will be the winning horse".

She says accumulated findings from the market research firms show industry at large that sugar-free is emerging from the niche where it was cosseted ten years ago.

Then, the main market for sugar-free confectionery was made up of diabetics and calorie-counters. Now, in the light of healthier eating trends, consumers are seen to actually prefer sugar-free products - as long as the taste remains unaffected.

For instance, in Italy sugar-free products were seen to grow by some 41 per cent between 2001 and 2006, thereby significantly contributing to total market growth. In France, the sugar-free category is said to have had a 40 per cent share of the market overall last year, contributing eight per cent to overall confectionery growth.

In Germany, sugar confectionery experienced a seven per cent loss, Palatinit has observed - but sugar-free sweets more than made up for it with 31 point growth.

Meissner confirmed that Palatinit has seen a corresponding growth in sales of its sugar replacer - although precise sales figures are not broken out from that of its parent company Sudzucker.