Eggs in a tube: Khaisook eyes protein and convenience-seeking consumers with RTE egg white products
Khaisook’s flagship product is a tube of ready-to-eat egg whites, offering consumers instant access to egg white protein without the hassle of cracking and preparing eggs or the cleanup that comes along with it.
“The idea is to make things easy and convenient for consumers who are looking for more protein. This applies to general consumers that just want more protein, but we’re also looking at and have worked with places like hospitals for patients who need more protein in their diets, with bodybuilders who want to build muscle and so on, they’re a big target market for us,” Khaisook CEO and Managing Director Suntaree Srivanitchapoom told FoodNavigator-Asia.
“Apart from the convenience of not needing to carry or crack eggs or spend 20 minutes boiling and peeling and then throwing the yolk or doing the associated clean-up, this product also has a longer shelf life whilst still remaining to offer that fresh taste and quality, and we’ve also taken great pains to ensure that the price is affordable for consumers.”
Khaisook markets its products under the EightyEight brand, and each tube contains four pre-cooked egg-whites which sell for US$1 or around THB33 per 100g tube. The product is available in most major Thai supermarkets such as Big C and Top.
“We actually use tofu packing machinery to pack our products, so you can see it looks like a tube of egg tofu visually, but we actually use a unique IP-protected processing technique to process the egg whites so that 100% egg white goodness goes in there and we have had a lot of positive feedback about it feeling 100% like a fresh egg,” said Srivanitchapoom.
“The great thing about focusing on eggs is also that it fits in with a lot of food and beverage trends that consumers today are in search of, such as clean label, keto, healthy eating and even vegetarian or plant-based seekers.
“Eggs are obviously not plant-based, but often when a consumer wants to stop eating meat, they will seek protein elsewhere and sometimes this is from eggs, which is where we come in with a healthy, convenient option.”
Khaisook also sells an egg white tofu which is packaged similarly in a tube but contains added water so is not 100% egg, which sells for THB13 (US$0.41) per 100g pack, and a protein snack made from egg whites, beans, brown rice and corn which sells from THB39 (US$1.24) per 20g pack.
The firm has also developed a variety of recipes for using the egg whites, from hot dishes to desserts to drinks.
“As for the egg yolks, we definitely don’t waste these but will sell them to factories making other products that need these such as those making salted egg yolk potato chips which were really popular last year in Thailand,” she added.
Eyeing other markets
Srivanitchapoom also has her eye on other markets in Asia where she believes her egg white products will also do well owing to a rising demand for protein in the region.
“We’re now preparing for our trademark registration in five countries in Asia, which are Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, India and South Korea,” she told us.
“COVID-19 is making progress in terms of exports a bit more difficult now, but we are doing what we can at home first. For instance, the egg product currently still needs to be delivered via cold chain, but since we want to export, we are working on developing the product to ambient temperature.
“So directly exporting is one of the plans, but the other strategy we are looking at will be do collaborate with local partners and license them to manufacture the product in each country – this would reduce costs for sure, but we would need to find the right partners for this first. First things first will be the trademark registration.”
As for new product development, Khaisook is looking at developing value-added products with the egg yolks as well.
“The idea was initially to do an egg yolk powder but we realised that competition is really stiff as imports of these are cheaper than making it locally, so we’re still looking at how to make value-added innovations with our egg yolks,” Srivanitchapoom said.
