Whey protein supply is tightening, and the brands most exposed are not the multinationals with locked-in long-term contracts — they are the emerging food and beverage operators trying to enter the high-protein category right now. NNB Nutrition and Axiom Foods are responding with a co-developed ingredient platform, PeptiClear™, designed to give formulators a clear, neutral-tasting, soluble plant protein that can substitute for whey across a wide range of applications — functional beverages, ready-to-drink products, ice cream, baked goods, confectionery, sauces, and high-protein snacks.
The Supply Problem
Whey is a byproduct of cheese manufacturing, which means its supply is structurally capped by dairy production capacity. As protein fortification spreads from sports nutrition into mainstream food categories — what the industry is calling the "proteinification" of food — demand has outrun that ceiling. Large multinationals can absorb the cost pressure through purchasing scale and multi-year supply agreements. Smaller brands and co-manufacturers cannot, and they are increasingly priced out or simply unable to source consistent supply. That dynamic is the direct market problem NNB and Axiom Foods are engineering against.
What PeptiClear™ and DL-185® Actually Do
PeptiClear™ hydrolyzed plant proteins are formulated to eliminate the off-notes — bitterness, grittiness, opacity — that have historically made plant proteins a difficult substitute in clear beverage and dairy-adjacent applications. High solubility and a neutral flavor profile are the functional claims that matter most to product developers working in RTD and frozen dessert formats, where whey has historically held an advantage.
Paired with that ingredient is DL-185®, a di-leucine peptide — two leucine molecules linked in peptide form — that NNB positions as a performance enhancer for protein formulations. In published human clinical research, DL-185® demonstrated approximately 60% greater stimulation of muscle protein synthesis compared with leucine alone, and produced greater strength improvements than equivalent leucine supplementation in resistance-trained individuals. Both findings come from peer-reviewed studies cited by NNB. For operators developing sports nutrition or functional food SKUs, this creates an on-label performance story that plant-protein-only formulations have rarely been able to support.
What This Signals for Procurement
For food and beverage operators actively building or refreshing high-protein SKUs, the NNB-Axiom partnership surfaces a few procurement-level considerations worth tracking. First, the whey supply constraint is not a short-term disruption — it is structural, and ingredient partners offering scalable plant-based alternatives with documented functionality are becoming a more important part of the supplier conversation. Second, the ability to combine a clean-label plant protein base with a clinically studied performance peptide in a single formulation platform reduces the complexity of sourcing from multiple vendors. Third, smaller and emerging brands that have been locked out of premium whey supply by purchasing power dynamics now have a more credible functional alternative to evaluate.
For purchasing teams and R&D leads benchmarking ingredient options, the relevant question is not whether plant protein can match whey on every dimension — it cannot yet — but whether the performance gap is narrow enough for the specific application and target consumer. In clear beverages and snack formats, PeptiClear™'s solubility and opacity specs are worth a technical evaluation. In muscle-building or sports-adjacent products, the DL-185® clinical data provides a differentiated claim structure.
Operators sourcing ingredients for functional beverage and RTD launches or evaluating protein ingredient procurement shifts should add this platform to their next RFP cycle.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
