Protect your bottom line from the cost of moisture damage.
Resealable Integrity: Ensure bulk packaging uses industrial-grade zippers or heat seals to protect the product after the first opening.
It happens one humid morning at your facility that your decorative baking sugar has turned from flowing freely to becoming rock solid. There was a bad load of natural nonpareils, and the whole production has stopped. One mistake in your purchasing and your retail buyer will doubt that your supplier can meet the quantity needs.
Humidity is the silent enemy of all clean-label confectionery ingredients. Humidity sneaks in without making a sound, works gradually, and only when it is too late do we realize the price that it costs.
This post is for those involved with the procurement of baking ingredients. It talks about what humidity does to natural sanding sugar and natural nonpareils, where along your supply chain is the risk the greatest, and how you should talk to your B2B baking ingredients supplier before buying.
What Humidity Actually Does to Decorative Sugars
Sugar is hygroscopic; it draws water from its environment. This is not a flaw, but chemistry. However, it is a problem for decorative baking sugar products, including both natural sanding sugar and natural nonpareils.
Here’s how it works.
Clumping and caking. Moisture-absorbing natural sanding sugar undergoes partial dissolution on the surface of the crystal. As it dries in response to changing levels of ambient humidity, those surfaces reform bonds with adjacent sugar crystals. The result is clumped sugar. If clumping is mild, sugar may exhibit some soft lumps that can be broken up by hand. In the case of more serious caking, the sugar forms into bricks that will no longer flow through equipment.
Lack of flow properties. Natural sprinkles and sanding sugars have to flow smoothly in order to travel through processing equipment, including dispensers and applicators. When moisture causes increased friction between crystals, this flow ceases.
Bleeding of color. Natural food color sugar uses organic dyes extracted from plants or minerals, and bound to the surface of the sugar crystals. When there is too much moisture, it will break the bond and cause colors to move from where they should be. A rainbow of colors turns into an ugly mud-brown mixture as individual colors bleed into one another.
Surface dissolution. Nonpareil candy balls – tiny balls of sugar used as decorations for various types of food products – come with a thin layer of sugar crystals forming a shell. Moisture makes the shell dissolve even before baking takes place. The shape changes; it becomes flat instead of being round. And it loses its shiny surface.
All this can be avoided. But avoiding it takes work.
Where the Risk Sits in Your Supply Chain
Humidity damage does not occur in one location. Humidity damage is compounded in multiple locations. Procurement teams who know this will make superior specifications. Brand teams who know this ask smarter questions during supplier audits.
At the supplier’s manufacturing plant. Sanding sugar and nonpareils that are natural need to be produced in an environment where humidity levels are properly regulated. This means humidity control at the factory floor, the packaging station, and at the sealing station. If you choose a supplier whose facility cannot maintain low humidity levels, expect moisture damage even before it arrives at your warehouse.
During packaging. Your choice of packaging format will directly impact your ability to keep out moisture in the journey from your supplier’s facility to your warehouse. Thin polyethylene bags without moisture barrier layers do not stand a chance in humid conditions. Foil laminated packaging with a sealed closure stands up to moisture better than the former.
On the move. The changing temperature while in transit leads to condensation within the packing material. A pallet that starts off in a cool storage facility, travels through a warm truck, and ends up in a humid warehouse may be exposed to condensation more than once on the same trip. While refrigeration keeps temperatures stable and guards against temperature fluctuations, it adds its own potential for condensation when the cargo is transferred back to room temperature.
At your dock. This is the stage at which sourcing departments tend to underestimate the risks involved. When a product sits on a dock exposed to humid conditions before being stored in a temperature-controlled environment, even properly packed baking sugar will absorb moisture.
In your storage facility. Relative humidity above 60% is the standard threshold for risk with sugar-based decorative ingredients. The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers recommends 45% to 55% relative humidity for general food storage. For decorative sugars, staying at the lower end of that range is the safer target.
What Good Humidity Control Looks Like at the Supplier Level
Humidity control is a must in the evaluation process when selecting a natural sanding sugar supplier or nonpareil supplier for business-to-business cooperation.
Here is how you can recognize a supplier who takes humidity seriously:
Production in a controlled environment. The place where the allergen-friendly sprinkles and sanding sugars you want to buy are made should have a well-documented range of temperatures and humidity on the production floor. You can request this data from a qualified supplier. They will be happy to provide it because this information proves their commitment to safe food.
Moisture-resistant packaging. Foil laminate bagging, vapor barrier film, or heat-sealed multi-ply packaging is more effective at moisture resistance than regular poly bags. Ask your supplier about various packaging solutions they have to offer and the moisture ingress rates provided by each type of packaging.
Water activity specifications. Aw or water activity specification is the one that determines the physical and microbial stability of any ingredient used in foods and beverages. In terms of decorated baking sugar, the aw below 0.60 is the benchmark limit which prevents caking and risk of contamination with microbes. Request your supplier for such information. If the company measures moisture content and doesn’t disclose water activity specification, this is definitely a deficiency in their quality control procedures.
Shelf life documentation in terms of storage conditions. All shelf life claims without specifying the storage conditions behind them are meaningless. In case the vendor states “24-month shelf life,” then he must tell you under what conditions these 24 months will be valid, whether 24 months at some temperature and relative humidity, or 24 months in some special package.
Physical properties required for each lot in the Certificate of Analysis. The Certificate of Analysis for the natural sprinkles must include not only the confirmation of the presence of the intended natural coloring agent and allergen data, but also the physical properties, including granulation, flowability, and water activity.
The Institute of Food Technologists publishes guidelines related to water activity and moisture stability of food ingredients in peer-reviewed articles. This is a good technical resource for your team members working as food scientists.
Storage Standards Your Team Controls
But even in a scenario where your supplier ships you only perfect products, your storage process might easily negate any efforts by ruining your product. The job of sourcing teams and sustainability directors involved in setting internal storage standards ensures high-quality ingredients until the production floor.
Create a humidity standard and stick to it. Natural nonpareils should be stored between 45% and 55% relative humidity levels, and the same standard applies for the natural sanding sugar. Install a humidity monitor in each storage space where decorative baking sugar is stored. Monitor these meters according to the schedule; do not wait for signs of humidity issues to take a check-up.
Adhere to FIFO rotation policy strictly. The first-in-first-out rule is an elementary food safety practice, but in relation to decorative sugars, it becomes the primary technique used for moisture management. Older batches that have had enough time in storage accumulate more moisture exposure during their stay there. Move them quickly and efficiently.
Conduct packaging inspection on receiving. Examine every pallet for damaged packaging seals, torn bags, and moisture inside the package. Reject any batch displaying any moisture-related defects. Document your rejection and report it to your supplier immediately.
Do not cycle temperatures during storage. Maintain uniform storage temperatures. Temperature cycling causes condensation to occur within the packaging, despite external control of humidity levels. If your storage space is adjacent to a loading bay or external walls, consider purchasing more insulation or moving your sensitive ingredients to a different location.
Seal open packages right away. In the manufacturing facility, any package containing natural sanding sugar or natural nonpareils that is open becomes exposed to moisture. Develop a policy where open packages are resealed after each batch production, rather than kept open and stored on a shelf.
What Humidity Damage Costs You
This is what counts to the brand manager. Deterioration of decorative components due to humidity is a cost issue.
Write-offs of inventory. Clumping of sanding sugar and nonpareils can never be rectified commercially, and the batch will simply have to be written off at a loss. The ingredient cost needs to be borne, and replacements found and shipped on a tight schedule.
Down time. Jamming of processing lines due to non-flowing sanding sugar leads to a down time. Lost production time is lost revenue, which becomes a substantial figure when considered in terms of industrial bakery operations.
Costs of reworking. Contamination of the products in use due to color bleed caused by moisture deterioration of natural food coloring sugar can only result in rework at best, if not a complete loss of the product.
Compliance Risk with Retailers. When moisture-damaged products arrive on a retail customer’s shelf, you’ll be receiving quality complaints. Quality complaints could lead to enough doubt for your buyer to reassess the business relationship.
Impact on Sustainability Program. In terms of sustainability, the waste of ingredients caused by moisture damage goes against all of your organization’s goals to reduce food waste. Zero waste goals cannot be met when throwing out entire pallets of ingredients because of avoidable moisture damage issues. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has reported that food loss and waste cost the global economy an estimated $1 trillion annually.
What to Demand from Your Clean-Label Confectionery Ingredients Supplier
As the sustainability director and the sourcing team, you have the leverage to create the supplier standards. Exercise that leverage. The following are the standards you need to include when qualifying suppliers of natural sanding sugar and natural nonpareils:
- Environmental monitoring records. You should ask them for records for 12 months covering the production floor humidity and temperature. Not summarized; the records.
- Package performance metrics. Ask them to provide MVTR on the package formats they supply. MVTR refers to how much moisture can pass through the packaging material.
- Water activity specification per SKU. Each SKU must have water activity specifications. This cannot be compromised at all by the supplier.
- Incident reporting history. Find out if there have been any water-induced quality issues or recalls within the last three years. A good supplier will give you a straightforward response to this inquiry. A non-committal response is revealing.
- Moisture-resistant packaging alternatives for travel. Should any part of your supply chain be subjected to areas of high humidity – such as Gulf Coast distribution, Southeast Asian transit, or tropical destinations – then it pays to find out what alternative transit packaging your supplier can provide.
The FoodGrid range of natural-colored nonpareils and natural sanding sugar is delivered with all quality data sheets, which includes water activity and allergens. This information will be available right from the start, allowing sourcing managers to assess the product before placing their first order.
Building a Moisture-Resilient Decorative Program
It is not enough to simply prevent damage due to moisture exposure on a single delivery. The aim is to create a program for decorating ingredients that delivers consistent results throughout the year, regardless of climate, and across all distribution networks.
In practical terms, that means working with a B2B baking ingredients supplier that takes care of moisture control during production, packaging, and even labeling. That means setting internal standards for storage that account for the sensitivities of the ingredients that are being stored. Finally, it means creating supplier selection criteria that include physical specifications for the product, and not just its label.
Your sprinkles, sanding sugar, and nonpareils may be natural, but the truth is, consumers and retail buyers can see them. Clean-label ingredients can be beautiful and create trust. But when those ingredients suffer from moisture damage and become clumpy or change color, that trust can quickly be broken.
Moisture protection is how you preserve your investment in clean-label confectionery ingredients.
Partner with a Supplier Who Controls the Risk
FoodGrid offers natural sanding sugars, natural nonpareils, allergy-friendly sprinkles, and clean-label confectionery ingredients, accompanied by comprehensive documentation including certificate of analysis, water activity specification, colorant origin identification, allergen declaration, and manufacturing facility certifications, before your initial purchase.
Get in touch with our sourcing specialist. Come with your storage specifications, climate information, and required quantities. We’ll find the best fit for your application and ensure that it performs consistently on delivery to your facility.
Real Ingredients. Smarter Solutions.
