Summary: Salt policies driving APAC reformulation
- Salt governance is starting in Asia, with countries like Thailand planning a tiered salt tax system modeled after its sugar tax.
- Singapore will also expand Nutri-Grade labelling to include sodium and saturated fat by 2027.
- Food firms are reformulating early, driven by upcoming regulations and export market demands.
- Salt reduction tech is in high demand.
- Salt is harder to replace than sugar and its reformulation more technically complex
When the implementation of sugar taxes started picking up speed in the region seven or eight years back, the food industry expressed a great deal of doubt about the effectiveness of this measure.
Indeed, new research has also indicated that these taxes have had ‘limited real-world impact’ in terms of public health and chronic disease reduction – but one thing that cannot be denied is that sugar taxes and related measures such as nutritional grading schemes have driven a great deal of reformulation within the sector.
Today, focus has shifted from sugar to also include salt in various markets. Thailand, for example, has already announced that it will be introducing a tiered salt taxation system that is expected sometime this year which will be closely modelled after its sugar tax system.
“Thai consumers consume around 3,600mg of sodium a day, which is far more than the WHO guidelines of no more than 2,000mg daily,” Thai Excise Department Director-General Kulaya Tantitemit said at a local press conference.
“This is why we plan to use taxation policy as a tool to influence both production practices and consumer behaviour, in order to reduce health issues resulting from this high sodium consumption.”
Earlier this year, Singapore’s Ministry of Health (MOH) had also announced that it would be expanding the local Nutri-Grade labelling and advertising rules to cover sodium and saturated fat in food products starting 2027.
The sodium labelling will also follow its current sugar guidelines whereby products will be given an alphabetical A, B, C or D grade according to sodium content.
This will affect many more products such as salt, sauces, seasonings, instant noodles and more which contain salt as an ingredient.
The importance of sodium reformulation
This time around though, manufacturers are making early preparations for product reformulation in advance of the regulations.
“Salt reduction and reformulation technologies have definitely emerged as the top area of interest for food firms in the past year, likely driven by regulatory requirements,” Kerry Senior Strategic Marketing Manager Taste Jie Ying Lee told us at the recent Fi Asia 2025 show in Bangkok, Thailand.
“In addition, many Asian firms are exporters to the United States and United Kingdom where salt requirements are also low in line with demands for healthier products, so reformulating products to be healthier is now seen as important to become more competitive.”
In markets like Australia which has been utilising its Health Stars Rating (HSR) system for several years now, competitiveness from the health and nutrition angle has become even more crucial as many consumers have become accustomed to making purchases based on the number of stars a product has.
“The HSR has made a big impact on local reformulation as product star rating is tied in very closely with competitiveness given strong consumer focus on health and wellness, so many companies are either developing healthy extensions to their existing brands or new brands to keep up, all of which require reformulation technologies,” she added.
“There is also a strong demand for lower salt content in order to be able to attach claims such as ‘low salt’ or ‘reduced salt’ which are attractive to consumers, and this is why we are seeing tech like our Tastesense Salt doing very well in this market as firms need to also be able to achieve consistency, quality and manage costs when reformulating.”
Salt governance concerns
Although it may sound like a straightforward idea to govern salt content in the same way as sugar, industry experts believe that salt is far more complicated and the technical challenges are much more significant.
“Salt is not only used for taste but also for food preservation and shelf life, so it plays many roles in food manufacturing and the technical challenges for replacement are immense,” Mahidol University Assistant Professor Anadi Nitithamyong told us.
“We hope that manufacturers will not turn to artificial additives to make up for some of these functions, and sodium reduction must not be rushed as it is far more complicated that the current sugar tax in sugar-sweetened beverages.”
