Grant - About the Healthier Choice Symbol Development Scheme

About the Healthier Choice Symbol Development Scheme (HDS)

HDS covers both oil and grain staples (mainly rice and noodles), as well as sauces, desserts, wholegrain products, sweet spreads, and table salt. All ingredient products under HDS must be reformulated to meet the HCS nutrient guidelines [PDF, 605 KB] from the eligible categories.

Separate applications should be submitted for each different Qualifying Ingredient Category. If you have more than one product per ingredient category type, you may include the various products under a single application. Each product will be assessed independently for eligibility.

For instance:

Supplier A intends to develop healthier oil A, healthier oil B, wholegrain noodle C, and wholegrain noodle D.

A single application should be submitted for healthier oils A and B together

A second application should be submitted for wholegrain noodles C and D together

Each supplier is only allowed to have 1 HCS Development Project from each Qualifying Ingredient Category running at a single time (e.g. 1 Dessert and 1 Sauce project simultaneously, but not 2 separate Dessert projects).

This encourages food manufacturers to innovate and develop a wider variety of healthier ingredients and products for uptake in Singapore’s food service, by offering funding for activities such as trial production runs, packaging design, and more.

Areas of support

Product Development, Packaging, And Certification

Scheme participants can choose and state what they require in the areas of product development, packaging, and certification. They will then be supported to conduct innovations and developments of healthier ingredients and products to be sold in Singapore.

Examples include, but are not limited to:

• Developing healthier cooking oil blends with better frying durability

• Developing noodles with higher wholegrain percentage

Grant Support

HDS will fund up to 80% of the total qualifying project investment, with scheme participants co-paying the remaining 20% of project cost.

There will be an overall cap of $200,000 across supportable activities. Scheme participants can utilise this $200,000 for up to 2 years to complete the project.

Scheme participants will need to submit a softcopy of the Quarterly Progress report as well as other required documents for the grant amount to be disbursed.

For further enquiries, kindly refer to the FAQs or email us at HPB_Healthy_Eating@hpb.gov.sg