Crystal Cream & Butter Succeeds with Tate & Lyle

In 2005, Crystal Creamery launched a new fat-free, no-sugar-added yogurt, which incorporates a customized Tate & Lyle REBALANCE ingredients solution.

04/10/06 Crystal Cream & Butter Company, a full-line, dairy foods manufacturing company based in Sacramento, CA, is a great example of how Tate & Lyle's US food ingredients team (based in Decatur, Illinois) can help customers launch new products or revitalize their brands to help increase sales and profits. At Tate & Lyle's Value Added Seminar on 7 September, analysts and investors watched a customer case study that demonstrated the commercial benefits that Tate & Lyle's ingredient solutions can bring customers.

In 2005, Crystal Creamery launched a new fat-free, no-sugar-added yogurt, which incorporates a customized Tate & Lyle REBALANCE ingredients solution. This new non-fat, no-sugar-added yogurt contains SPLENDA Sucralose, which enables the company to use the SPLENDA logo on the packaging, as well as other Tate & Lyle ingredients. Tate & Lyle's food scientists and technical service team worked closely with Crystal Cream to tailor an existing Yogurt REBALANCE solution system and achieve a final product that met their targets.

David Walker, Vice President, Sales & Marketing, is thrilled by the success the new Crystal Cream yogurts have with consumers. "Our sales increase was 70 percent over the launch period, over the first four months as we went into this new product line-up. So not only were the initial purchases strong, but the repeat purchases were outstanding. Clearly the level of market share we were able to achieve and the repeat purchases were a reflection on the quality of the product that we put out there," he says.

"How would we evaluate their [Tate & Lyle's] performance? In all the years and all the experiences that I have had in developing new products I've never seen a company being able to go from a concept stage to a finished product in such a short period of time. That was amazing to us. It was also very efficient to work with their organization. As we look to develop new products, such as drinkable yogurts and functional beverages, they are one of the leading companies in developing those types of formulations, and we definitely will be utilizing Tate & Lyle to help us," says Walker.

"One of the things that have really helped Tate & Lyle become increasingly more effective with our customers is strong consumer understanding. We know from our consumer research that 78 percent of consumers want to reduce fat in their products, and 72 percent want to reduce the level of sugar. We want to share relevant consumer insights, and product prototypes based on these findings, with customers such as Crystal Cream. Through this approach, we can demonstrate how our market intelligence can be leveraged to support the customer's marketing and product strategies," says Harvey Chimoff, Director of Marketing, Americas, Tate & Lyle.

Based on this understanding of specific product categories, Tate & Lyle's food scientists have developed a range of ingredient solution systems which deliver specific functional, nutritional, or cost benefits without compromising the taste or texture of the final product. These solutions are marketed under four services: Tate & Lyle CREATE (product innovation), Tate & Lyle OPTIMIZE (delivering efficiency and cost savings), Tate & Lyle REBALANCE (reformulating the health profile of a product) and Tate & Lyle ENRICH (enhancing nutrition with functional ingredients).

SPLENDA Sucralose is a key ingredient in many of Tate & Lyle's ingredient solutions. Over 115 million people in the US are currently choosing products sweetened with SPLENDA Sucralose. Consumers love the taste and manufacturers benefit from its popularity and great functionality. Recent research in the US has shown that 4 of out 10 consumers are more likely to select products which display the "Sweetened with SPLENDA Logo".