Indonesia’s market high reliance toward sauces and seasonings for their daily consumption, causing this category to continuously grow in the market. In 2025, the market size of sauces and seasonings in Indonesia has reach $9.21 billion, and a positive trajectory is expected to continue in the future (CAGR 6.5% in 2030). It is a staple category that people consume daily, with average annual individual consumption reaching up to 9.2 kg. The market’s high preference to consume food with familiar and traditional seasonings is the main driver for its high demand.
The demand for Indonesian-style sauces and seasoning has now expanded beyond borders. The rising interest in Indonesian cuisine and the population of Indonesians living abroad are the main drivers for this growth. Countries with large Indonesian communities, such as the Netherlands, Australia and North America, have the highest demand for the category. Furthermore, some Dutch supermarkets have now stocked up sweet soy sauce (kecap manis) following the high penetration of this product in their market.
The shift to a vast moving lifestyle does not only affects the way people choose food and drinks to buy, but also to cook at home. People start to seek convenient sauces and seasonings that could be a cooking shortcut with an authentic flavour experience. This growing demand encourages brands to focus on delivering convenience in sauces and seasoning products, including:
- Ready-to-use product
Brands introduce products that could be directly added to people’s cooking, such as cooking paste. It reduces the time and effort needed to prepare the sauce while still delivering the flavour richness. Consumers in metropolitan areas with limited time to cook are the main segment that needs this type of convenience the most. Deliver the flavour richness in a pack is the challenge for brands to answer this segment’s needs. Utilising high-quality natural ingredients with consistent flavour quality is the anchor of sauces and seasoning product development.
- Innovative Format
The product format is continuously evolving to offer a less hassle experience in cooking. One of the most innovative developments is in broth products. Brands no longer deliver powder broth or raw natural ingredients to be boiled with the water, but in a coin broth. This format offers pre-portioned seasonings that don’t require users to measure, adjust, and estimate the dosage of seasonings. This type of convenience will answer the needs for people who lives alone or have just recently learned cooking. Ensuring raw material applicability for format exploration is the main challenge for brands to explore convenience in product format.
- Convenient Packaging
Packaging also has a role to deliver convenience in the sauces and seasonings products. Tub, Jar, Sealed and Stand-up pouches are becoming more popular in sauces and seasonings packaging to give a mess-free experience. Further, some brands also make single-serve packaging to offer a seamless cooking experience.
When it comes to ingredient sources, Indonesian has strong preferences for locally sourced ingredients. This makes a number of brands utilise ‘100% buatan Indonesia’ as their main product claim to attract people to purchase their products. On top of that, market interest in trying novel flavours actually opens another opportunity for brands to explore other local natural ingredients that could be used in the sauces and seasonings landscape.
The demand for seasonings in Indonesia is found to be quite stable over time. Where, the daily demand is commonly dominated by the light flavored seasonings mix (e.g. tempeh seasonings, fish seasonings, fried rice seasonings). During the festive seasons, usually the demand will shift to the strong flavored seasonings mix (e.g. rendang paste, opor seasonings). The consistent demand for seasonings signals the big potential for brands to explore within this category. Besides those two conventional sauces and seasonings type, in the past few years, global exposure and new food trends results in the growth of fusion seasonings in Indonesia.
Mentai, cheese sauces, gochujang, sriracha and seaweed in sauces and seasonings have grown significantly in Indonesia. Interestingly, those fusion seasoning no longer become seasonal sauce options in the market, instead the demand consistently grow. Even though size wise fusion seasonings demand is still way smaller than the conventional cooking seasonings, exploring this sub category has its own potential business value. Especially with the shift in the younger generation’s taste palette that favours these fusion flavours, the big potential demand expected to happen in the market.
The next big challenge in the sauces and seasonings category is the concern about the products’ health impact. The majority of the products within this category taste savoury and salty, resulting in high usage of sodium in the product. The market’s high awareness toward health issue makes them demanded brands to deliver healthier options with less sodium. However, since salt has its own crucial role to support the intended flavor, exploration to substitute salt to other ingredients is still a big challenge in the industry.
Sources:
mintel.com
