Indian expansion: Nexira and Synthite reinforce partnership in world’s largest acacia gum market

17 Oct 2018 --- French-headquartered acacia gum world leader, Nexira and India-based spice oleoresins leader, Synthite have entered a partnership to produce acacia gum at Synthite’s manufacturing plant near Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, southern India. This partnership augurs well for India – the world’s largest consumer of acacia gum – by offering various product references to food & beverage manufacturers, who use this gum widely for its technological and nutritional benefits.

Acacia gum has historically featured in local Indian consumption patterns. The partnership is aimed at meeting the objective of delivering Nexira products faster to customers across India and by also making them more cost-effective.

The coming together of the two global leaders in natural products reinforces a commitment to offer products “Inspired by Nature.” For Synthite and its flavor house associate Symega Food Ingredients Ltd., the construction of a new spray dryer for this purpose will support their goal of building strategic partnerships with key players in the food ingredients industry and also contribute to the “Make in India” mission.

In a detailed interview with FoodIngredientsFirst, Mathieu Dondain, Managing Director at Nexira confirmed that the main aim of the move will be to address the Indian domestic market for both local and multinational customers. While the initial capacity achieved by the partnership will be relatively small in the context of a company producing 25,000 MT of acacia gum in France [roughly 40 percent global acacia gum market share] there is a huge potential for growth in India, he stresses. A first agreement started in early 2017 initiated the partnership with some first quantities produced and sold locally in the past 18 months. 

“Starting in early 2019, we will have a new plant running from Synthite that will deliver additional capacity. We are anticipating that it will become significant in the short to mid-term, with a couple of thousand tons of production in a couple of years,” he notes.

“We are hoping to go to a higher level very soon to reach levels close to 1,000 tons in 2019. The target is to build up those quantities and address a market that is very big for the food & beverage industry. India has a population of over 1.3 billion and this ingredient is very compliant to all the diets in India,” Dondain adds. 

“Whether vegan or in the Indian pharmacopeia, acacia gum has been used there since ancient times. It has strong potential in the years ahead when India will start locally producing their own food & beverage products. It’s about making the transition from traditional and ancient usage to manufactured food & beverage products,” Dondain explains.

Synthite, founded in 1972, is the world’s largest producer of spice, with a product portfolio that includes a wide array of natural ingredients for the food, health and fragrance industries. Synthite’s associate company Symega manufactures savory flavor seasonings, sweet flavors and natural colors. For clean label products with superior organoleptic quality, Synthite employs some of the latest technologies such as Supercritical CO2, Spinning Cone Column and their Straights line. Synthite and Symega’s combined turnover in 2017 was US$250 million, with 80 percent of turnover coming from exports and 20 percent from domestic. 

“Our core businesses are botanical extracts from spices and flowers, spice powders, seasonings, flavors, natural colors and coloring foods,” Aju Jacob, Director, Strategic Growth Areas at Synthite tells FoodIngredientsFirst. “Our new focus areas include (a) algal biotechnology (b) clean label chili extracts (c) “brown” extracts (vanilla, tea, coffee and cocoa) (d) vegetable proteins and (e) animal nutrition.”

Jacob notes that this is Synthite’s first entrance into the acacia gum space and that the company sees opportunities in India in offering purified gum acacia for the traditional cooking and the traditional health segments. “We are starting with a capacity of 1000 MT per year and plan to scale to 2000 MT in the medium term. We would focus on developing new delivery systems and applications for gum acacia keeping in mind the Indian consumer,” he adds.

Despite the recent flooding in the Kerala region of India, where Synthite is headquartered and has many facilities, Jacob stresses that the company has been unaffected, as their operations are far away from the rivers. “Synthite, and everything else in the province of Kerala is running absolutely normally and our customers need not worry at all on this front,” he notes.

Founded in 1895, Nexira is a family-owned company which built its reputation as the world leader in acacia gum. Today Nexira is a global leader in natural ingredients and botanical extracts for food, nutrition and dietary supplements. Nexira manufactures a wide range of natural ingredients with recognized health benefits in France, such as Fibregum – an all-natural, organic and GMO-free source of soluble dietary fiber. Nexira's portfolio includes a large range of branded natural acacia gum ingredients with exceptional functional properties – emulsifiers and stabilizers, coating agents, texturizers, encapsulating agents and so on.

Through this strategic collaboration, Nexira will reinforce its local presence and offer better access of its products to the food & beverage industry in India. The Nexira India team in Mumbai will also provide stronger technical assistance and sales support to existing and future customers. 

“We opened Nexira India in 2012 and have a sales, administrative and technical team in place. Our model is to generally not to work with distributors. Despite being such a small company, our international presence is actually quite wide. India is such a big market that we need to be directly present and always wanted to have our team there,” says Dondain. 

Shared values, including the fact that both are family-owned companies, were key to the partnership, notes Dondain. With a supplier and customer relationship already previously in place, which came into being during the last decade, this collaboration has now been taken to the next level. “We entered into discussions with Synthite four years ago. For us, it is a good, trustworthy and reliable partner with whom we share values. They are a world leader in extracts and we felt that there were good combinations and synergies to build that partnership,” says Dondain. 

The combination could ultimately lead to other technical synergies too, beyond gum acacia, with a wealth of herbal and botanical ingredients existing in India. “Right now we are focused on our flagship product. In the future, we will see where we can build from there. There are many plants with potential in India so that’s what we will see as the agreement develops. But we will start with this and make it as efficient as possible. There are potential things in the pipeline but they are not as yet defined,” he notes. 

Diversification is key to Nexira’s expansion strategy. The company just completed their 2018 financial year with revenues estimated to be €116 million (US$134 million). While acacia gum still accounts for over two-thirds of this turnover, there has been a major evolution in the last ten years. “We want to consolidate our leadership in acacia gum, but also want to be a leader in natural ingredients. We have been able to create roughly 30 percent of our business outside of acacia gum,” stresses Dondain. 

For Nexira’s Managing Director, you can no longer afford to be a single ingredient supplier. “Acacia gum is a wonderful product and we want to keep promoting it in new ways; whether for fiber or technical properties. But we need to have other products for both the food and health industry. In 10 years, we created 30 percent of our business on other ingredients and on the health and nutraceutical part. Culturally it is a shift but it is important to see the global picture,” he adds.

One example of this diversification came in the form of a partnership announced last month with California Natural Color [a subsidiary of wine giant EJ Gallo] on the introduction of a grape seed extract that has been purely extracted by water. VinOseed SO free is claimed to exceed the highest market standards. 

At Health Ingredients Europe (HiE 2018) in Frankfurt next month, Nexira will launch a baobab product as the company’s latest superfruit. “It combines well with other Nexira’s superfruits thanks to its antioxidant properties and high nutrient content. Organic certified and sustainably harvested in Africa this new ingredient will be a perfect source of inspiration for your new product developments,” the company writes. 

The baobab superfruit has been enjoying an NPD resurgence, boosted by renewed interest in the digestive health and low GI space, as well its strong potential for use in the sports nutrition market. Baobab – which is touted as offering low GI appeal, a high dietary fiber content and for being rich in vitamin C – has seen annual growth of 53 percent in NPD, according to Innova Market Insights data.

“We have been selling baobab products for a couple of decades through one of our subsidiaries and now the market is a bit more mature for baobab and we will add it to our range of products, mainly in Europe at the beginning with HiE as a highlight, but we will also promote it at SupplySide West (SSW),” says Dondain. Also at SSW, Nexira will launch a patented ingredient for their premium range with strong clinical support that functions as a fat binder.

The expansion of Nexira’s portfolio is profound, but their partnership with Synthite illustrates that acacia gum will remain the flagship in their natural ingredient range for some time to come. 

By Robin Wyers