Coca-Cola and Chromocell Collaborate on Innovative Sweetener Technology

This partnership is central to The Coca-Cola Company’s commitment to deliver great-tasting beverages that meet the growing and changing needs of consumers.

12/13/2010 --- The Coca-Cola Company, the world’s largest beverage company, and Chromocell Corporation, a company focused on using proprietary technologies to discover and develop novel flavor ingredients for the food, beverage, and ingredient supply industries, announced that they are collaborating on flavor innovation research.

This partnership agreement includes the discovery and development of sweetness enhancers, natural sweeteners and other flavor ingredients. This partnership is central to The Coca-Cola Company’s commitment to deliver great-tasting beverages that meet the growing and changing needs of consumers.

“Throughout our history we have demonstrated an unwavering commitment to pushing the boundaries of beverage innovation, something we’ve been able to achieve by listening to our consumers and customers and pursuing the right choices with the very latest proprietary knowledge and technology to drive our research and development,” said Bilal Kaafarani, Senior Vice President of Global Research and Innovation for The Coca-Cola Company. “This collaboration with Chromocell will help us build a robust pipeline of innovation across categories and sweetness options so we can deliver to our consumers a variety of great-tasting beverages.”

“Chromocell is excited to collaborate with Coca-Cola on the development of great-tasting zero and reduced calorie beverages," stated Christian Kopfli, CEO, Chromocell. “Our proprietary technology, using naturally-occurring systems, is key to helping The Coca-Cola Company deliver great-tasting beverages. This technology allows us to test extracts and ingredients from fruits, herbs and vegetables for unique ingredients with desired taste qualities. We're proud of this exclusive partnership, which expands our collaborations with industry leaders into the beverage space and capitalizes on our Chromovert technology to develop innovative sweet enhancers and natural sweeteners to the benefit of consumers."

The Coca-Cola Company is committed to being at the forefront of sweetness innovation. In 2008, The Company developed and launched Stevia extract, a natural, zero-calorie sweetener, in collaboration with Cargill. Stevia is currently being used in more than 20 products from The Coca-Cola Company globally, providing consumers with a great range of reduced and no-calorie beverage options.

Under the terms of the agreement with Chromocell, The Coca-Cola Company will have worldwide, exclusive rights for the use of all flavors, sweeteners and sweetness enhancers in all non-alcoholic ready to drink categories. In addition to research funding, Chromocell will receive royalty payments based on sales of products that contain technologies discovered during the collaboration.