Langdon: A diverse range of quality ingredients
A fifth generation, family-owned business, Langdon offers innovative solutions and high-quality ingredients to UK food and beverage manufacturers. Best known across their customer base for their herb, spice, and dehydrated offering, Langdon proudly supplies M&S A-list herbs and spices, representing the quality and standards upheld by this renowned retailer. To date, most of their sales are from these key categories, Langdon’s pantry also includes natural Japanese flavours, functional ingredients, and Australian grains and botanicals.
As well as a diverse pantry, Langdon also have a very diverse range of services. Whilst a lot of ingredients suppliers are strictly importers and exporters, Langdon also has in-house product development, dedicated technical support, procurement, sales, finance, marketing, and customer service, like a one-stop product development shop, says Dale Hearmon, UK director.
“It’s not just trading physical goods,” he says. “If someone wants to come and create a new product, or a range of NPD, they can source all of the ingredients that they need from us, and we work alongside them to support them in developing and creating a perfect final product.”
For instance, an ongoing NPD trend for the next 12 months in the UK will be healthy snacking. “In Australia we do about 300,000 kilos of chickpeas, and the supplier has a really clever patented technology process to turn chickpeas into puffed snacks,” says Dale. “This process adds no fat or oil to the grains and pulses, making them an ideal vehicle for Langdon’s pantry of spices,” Dale notes. From there, their in-house NPD and marketing teams can assist in curating on-trend products then hand over to the supply chain team to make it happen.
Fire it up
Another increasing trend in the UK is for chillies, and not just the insane one-chip challenge. Chilli connoisseurs are famously not just interested in heat, but the various aspects a different chilli can offer, like the fruitiness of a particular strain. Langdon works work with a chilli supplier that can source a large range of named chillis, which means food manufacturers can call that out on the front and back of pack.
“Named chillis offer an opportunity to make an origin claim and add that layer of authenticity that consumers are looking for,” says Dale. “It’s a really easy way for food manufacturers to call out those sort of food trends that are happening by just using one of our interesting named chillies.”
But it’s not just the uber-trendy ingredients Langdon specialises in. Langdon work with some of the finest herbs, spices and dehydrated vegetable suppliers in the world, supplying UK manufacturers with the finest pantry staples.
Traceability and sustainability have never been more important than they are today, and the same could be said for quality. Dale notes how Langdon’s long standing supplier relationships ensure traceable supply chains and therefore quality consistency. He says it’s harder for cheaper alternatives from elsewhere in the world to achieve these levels without doing their proper due diligence. Naturally, this quality often means that manufacturers can lower the ingredient inclusions, offering crucial money saving measures. “Every supplier will say they are quality, but every year we get the highest food standards,” he says. “And supplying M&S approved A-list herbs and spices is like a gold standard.”
The ingredients supply chain has always been fast and complex, but quality, sustainability, traceability, and innovation remain vital. And after 170 years, Langdon still stands out.
Meet Langdon at Tastes of Better in May, where ingredient innovators showcase first-hand their latest innovations to food developers from brands, manufacturers, retailers, foodservice and QSRs.
