Packaged food grew 2.2% in the first half of this year, with volume flat.

Packaged food grew 2.2% in the first half of this year, with volume flat. The ingredients replacing its ingredients are forecast to grow 6 to 9.

That gap reframes the whole conversation. Reformulation keeps getting filed as a compliance cost. In a category growing two percent, it is the only lane compounding faster than inflation.

So the question is not whether to move. It is when. And the answer is now, not because of the deadline, but because of the crowd behind it. Every brief in the industry lands in the same window, and application labs, extraction capacity, and qualification slots are finite. Teams that start in 2026 get a lab that answers the phone. Teams that start in late 2027 get a waiting list.

The expensive part was never the bench work. It is the searching that comes first. That is the step DyeConverter deletes: SKU-level ingredient intelligence, so a team walks into the first bench run already holding the short list, the tradeoffs, and what has already failed for someone else.

There is no prize for being last through a crowded door.

Sources: Circana; Future Market Insights; Grand View Research.