KEY INTERVIEW: Alland & Robert Masters the Market for Acacia Gum, Reaping Rewards From Investments

28 Sep 2015 --- Many processed food ingredients promise stability of flavor functionality and many do the job with consistency and reliability. However, one ingredient, Acacia Gum, brings more to the table than just stability. Acacia Gum is a natural, sustainable, vegan clean label product that promises to provide a viable alternative to chemically produced ingredients. One of the world’s largest suppliers of Acacia Gum, Alland & Robert, has recently confirmed its on-going investment in the development of applications. Research & Development Director, Dr Isabelle Jaouen, spoke to FoodIngredientsFirst about how this all-natural, multifunctional ingredient continues to grow sales by 10% year-on-year for Alland & Robert.

The wild acacia tree, which grows on the edge of the Sahara desert, holds the key to a truly multifunctional ingredient. Its gum, resulting from exudation, is harvested from the stems and branches of wild acacia tree for a period of four months of the year. Thereafter, after first cleaning and packaging operations performed by A&R African partners, the colorless, tasteless and odorless product is shipped to France, where Alland & Robert, drawing on over 130 years of experience with this natural additive, further process it to make it easy to use in the food, beverage, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries.

“Our main markets nowadays are the food, flavors and beverage industry,” explains Jaouen. “Specifically, the confectionery industry is a very big market for us, but integrating our Acacia Gum product into the emulsifiers used in flavors and beverages is also a considerable area.”

One of the reasons for its success is the pure simplicity of Acacia Gum. When it arrives at Alland & Robert, at its plant near Rouen, France, the product is dissolved, before being purified to remove all foreign matters. The remaining small droplets then meet the hot air of one of the company’s three drying towers and a pure powder is created.

“Alland & Robert invested in the first of its three drying towers in 2002,” said Jaouen. “The introduction gave the company significant growth, which enabled it to install a second in 2007 and a third in 2013. The investment has allowed us to triple our turn-over in the last 10 years, and our yield is now around 15,000 tons/year, in a 50,000 tonnes global market.”

Being both hydrophobic and hydrophilic, Acacia Gum is perfectly suited as a stabiliser of colors and flavors held in emulsion. It can stabilise both concentrated and diluted solutions, but it can also be used as a barrier between oil-based products (eg nuts) and water soluble coatings, for example in chocolate coated nut applications.

Whilst the multifunctional abilities of Alland & Robert’s products are far-reaching and established, research into optimising Acacia Gum is not over, and the company is not complacent. “I started with the company some 23 years ago,” says Jaouen. “Even when I was working as a laboratory manager, the 5th generation owners made it clear that they wanted to develop R&D and technical assistance for customers. This is the driving force behind the recent commitment to invest for a further five years in working with the laboratory of Professor Christian Sanchez of the University of Montpellier on fundamental research to further characterise the gums and make innovation.

“By working with highly skilled scientists and PhD students our goal is to have a better knowledge regarding behaviour and structure of our gums in order to provide better technical assistance and optimise the customer’s process.”

“The analytical equipment that we have invested some €200,000 in is installed at the university in a laboratory dedicated to the characterization of natural polymers, while the A&R R&D lab located in the plant area carries out mainly practical trials to evidence functional properties in final products. In this way we can work to better our offering to the customer,” explains Jaouen.

At Montpellier, as well as installing equipment to carry out research on the gum itself, several expert laboratories generate a multidisciplinary team specialised in different market areas. For example, there are labs dedicated to flavors, to wine or vegetable proteins, and so on. The current five year program began in 2012, and the company has recently confirmed that it is to renew the program for another five years.

“In summary, the purpose of our involvement with the University of Montpellier is three-fold,” says Jaouen. “Firstly, we want to develop a perfect knowledge of the gum and its behaviour in different environments; we also wish to create new products for the future that will develop new functionalities, so that we might develop the market in less-explored areas such as dairy and savory meals for instance. Finally, this project offers us the opportunity to develop partnerships with other industries and provide expert knowledge in a three-way relationship between the company, Alland & Robert, the university, and the customer.”

The future, says Jaouen will bring the same kind of ambition and seek to provide customers with the confidence and reassurance that Acacia Gum is a natural, reliable, clean product. “Key to the future is to ensure the safety of the product, both in terms of its purity and its microbiological vulnerabilities. That is fundamental so we are investing in ways to improve the process, without using chemicals. Clean label is a hot topic and one that Acacia Gum fulfils perfectly. The product is multifunctional and so could lead to the use of fewer ingredients, which is what consumers are looking for on their labels. It is also sustainable, so the future of the gum is assured.”

By providing a natural, sustainable alternative to animal-based ingredients, Alland & Robert has assured its future as one of the leaders in the world of clean label stabilisers.

By Kelly Worgan