Chocolate and confectionery
Permissible indulgence with better-for-you options
Milk powders have unique properties and advantages to create high-quality and delicious treats. Valio’s technology know-how and pure Finnish dairy ingredients allow chocolate and confectionery producers to manufacture products with authentic sensory experiences and better nutritional values. Manufacturers can offer treats that not only taste delicious but also provide added nutritional benefits, less sugar, more protein, low or no lactose for digestive wellness, making them more appealing to health-conscious consumers.
Sugar reduction
Consumers want their sweets with less sugar
Consumers increasingly expect chocolates and confectionery to offer indulgence with less sugar, clean label recipes, and natural ingredients. However, reducing sugar in chocolate, toffees, fillings, and cocoa-based products can easily compromise sweetness, texture, mouthfeel, and overall product quality. Manufacturers need solutions that allow meaningful sugar reduction while maintaining the sensory appeal that defines premium confectionery.
Valio Bettersweet™ – a service solution that enables natural sugar reduction
Valio Bettersweet™ is a research and development service that enables confectionery manufacturers to reduce sugar levels naturally, without sacrificing taste, texture, or product stability. Provided as a full R&D service, Bettersweet™ includes recipe and application development, market insights, and regulatory guidance to support successful product launches.
The solution performs reliably across a wide range of applications, including milk chocolate, white chocolate, toffee, fillings and spreads, cocoa drink powder and caramel sauce.
Digestive wellness
Demand for lactose free sweets is growing
Digestive wellness is becoming an important driver of consumer choice, with millions globally experiencing lactose intolerance, IBS, or general gastrointestinal sensitivity. This shift extends beyond dairy and into confectionery, where demand for gut-friendly, lactose free or low lactose chocolate and sweets continues to grow.
Premium flavour and digestive comfort with Valio Eila® lactose free powders
With Valio Eila® lactose free milk powders, manufacturers can create indulgent chocolate and confectionery products that support digestive comfort while maintaining a naturally rich, milky taste with a subtle toffee-like note. Valio’s filtration-based lactose free technology preserves the original milk mineral composition, ensuring natural milky taste and smooth processing performance easier than with lactose-hydrolysed powders.
Clean label
Chocolate and confectionery with fewer additives
Clean label has become a defining megatrend across food and beverage and confectionery is no exception. Consumers expect transparency, recognisable ingredients, and products that feel natural and trustworthy. Yet in chocolate, fillings, caramels, and cocoa-based applications, removing additives and E-coded ingredients can make it difficult to maintain stable texture, appealing flavour, and reliable processing performance.
Valio Eila® specialty milk powders for natural product formulations
Valio Eila® specialty milk powders make it easier to create clean-label chocolate and confectionery with short, recognisable ingredient lists and a naturally appealing product image. By replacing E-number emulsifiers and stabilisers with functional dairy ingredients, manufacturers can maintain authentic flavour, optimal texture, and excellent processing performance, all while supporting clean-label approach and a minimally processed positioning.
Made from fully traceable Finnish milk, Valio’s solutions also strengthen product transparency, helping brands deliver confectionery that is as natural as it is delicious.
Why choose Valio for chocolate & confectionery
Unmatched dairy expertise
For more than 120 years, Valio has advanced the science of dairy, building a heritage of innovation backed by over 300 patents and a Nobel Prize. This deep expertise helps you create products with exceptional taste, texture, and functionality.
World-class Finnish milk
Our milk comes from Finland, where strict standards, full traceability, and exceptional purity allow you to build products with true premium value. Our producers work in one of the world’s cleanest environments, ensuring consistently high-quality raw materials.
End-to-end support
We partner with you throughout product development. Our experts offer guidance in formulation, process optimisation, and application testing, helping you create products that perform reliably and meet consumer expectations.
Applications for chocolate and confectionery
Valio is your trusted partner for manufacturing reduced or no added sugar products, developing low or no lactose chocolate and confectionery products. We offer clean label solutions to reformulate products by replacing E code ingredients and maintain an authentic sensory sensation.
Products for chocolate and confectionery
Valio Eila® PRO lactose free milk powders
Higher protein level, fresh milky taste. Easy to increase protein level with good tasting, high quality milk proteins.
Valio Eila® Sweet lactose free milk powder
Regular protein and carbohydrate level, sweet milky taste Sweeter taste without increasing energy level.
Meet the growing demand for better-for-you chocolate and confectionery
Our whitepaper explores new opportunities in natural sugar reduction, digestive-friendly formulations, and the role of AI in product development—plus practical insights for chocolate, fillings, caramels, and cocoa powders. Download it to gain clear, science-based guidance for creating the next generation of permissible indulgence.
Insights for chocolate and confectionery
Caramelized blonde chocolate
Three reasons to reduce sugar in chocolate
Valio Carbo™ partnership programme
Brunberg’s lactose free milk chocolate bars — a chocolate lo…
Orkla prefers sustainable suppliers
Future-Proof Milk Chocolate Is Here, Developed by Valio Bett…
Interested in further information?
Want to hear more about our business solutions and ingredients? To be connected with Valio Food Solution Sales, fill in the contact form. Our product experts will be happy to help you
