InnoSweet to Challenge Tate & Lyle's Sucralose Position

19/07/06 InnoSweet, the specialty sweeteners supplier, has started marketing activities for its InnTense sucralose, which the company says does not infringe any of Tate & Lyle’s existing patents in the European Union or the Americas. Roland Beck Commercial Manager at InnoSweet could not reveal exactly how the process, which took the company two years to develop, differed from that of global leader Tate & Lyle. The source of the raw material for Innosweet’s sucralose is also sucrose, “but it just about the way you chemically apply the various options to arrive there”, Beck told FoodIngredientsFirst.

In May of this year Tate & Lyle’s US subsidiary, Tate & Lyle Sucralose, Inc. filed suit in the US District Federal Court for Central Illinois against a Chinese manufacturing group based in Hebei province as well as six importers of sucralose into the US. The proceedings allege infringement of patented sucralose manufacturing technology in respect of sucralose manufactured in China. But InnoSwwet is confident that it will not be dragged into any legal squabbles for their new product.

“We have thoroughly studied the patent situation in the EU and the Americas, and came to the conclusion that the process used to manufacture our InnTense sucralose does not infringe any of Tate & Lyle’s patents,” says Dr. Volker Diehl, New Products Manager at InnoSweet. “We consulted law firms with expertise in the field, and they fully confirmed the opinion expressed by our own experts.”

Beck said that sucralose has been the fastest-growing high-intensity sweetener in the past few years and that the market has been waiting for a long time for a reliable second source of sucralose. “The normal growth for a high intensity sweetener over the last few years has been 8-10%, sucralose is definitely above that. The sucralose market should increase by 10-20% annually for the next three years to come”, Beck said.

Sucralose is 600 times sweeter than sugar. InnoSweet say that its taste profile is closer to that of sucrose than any other approved high-intensity sweetener. Although it is derived from sugar, sucralose is non-cariogenic, and it does not contribute to the caloric value of food products.

Beck could not reveal any details of when new finished products containing their sucralose would hit the market, or of companies that InnoSweet have signed contracts with but would disclose the applications for their product. “They will be the three usual suspects of soft drinks, the dairy industry and most probably the table-top industry, although we will not be making the table-top ourselves. We will remain purely as an ingredient supplier”, Beck added.