PureCircle Launches New Custom Ingredient for Drinks: Sigma-Beverage

23 Nov 2016 --- PureCircle introduces Sigma-Beverage, its latest breakthrough stevia ingredient that is specifically optimized for beverage formulations and delivers unmatched taste results when compared to other stevia ingredients on the market. Sigma-Beverage performs similarly to sugar at deep calorie reductions so formulators can create beverage solutions consumers will love while reducing development time by 30 – 50 percent.

“Sigma-Beverage was formulated with a carefully tailored, proprietary combination of steviol glycosides designed to address the unique needs for beverage formulations,” said Faith Son, PureCircle’s Vice President of Marketing and Innovation. “We have seen success with this approach for our customers and are excited to help them further unlock the beverage category and reduce overall calories while meeting the taste desires consumers demand.”

Designed as the perfect stevia sweetener for beverage formulations, Sigma-Beverage has a crucial upfront sweetness needed for most beverage applications and provides a reduction in linger when formulating low-to-zero calorie solutions.

“Beverages have provided a challenge for formulators because of the high sweetness max,” said John Martin, PureCircle’s Senior Director of Global Technical Innovation. “To achieve that high level of sweetness with stevia can often result in linger and a strong, sweetness aftertaste. However, by selecting the steviol glycosides that provide a very clean, sugar-like taste with a reduced linger, we have been able formulate a stevia ingredient that really works well for the challenges of beverage applications. We are extremely pleased with the results we are seeing.”

Sigma-Beverage is the third, category specific ingredient in PureCircle’s portfolio. It joins Sigma-Tea and Sigma-Dairy, all of which are outperforming first generation Reb A solutions on taste and have been developed through PureCircle’s predictive modeling technology.

Speaking with FoodIngredientsFirst at Food Matters Live yesterday, Olivier Kutz, Marketing Manager, EMEA, said: “The demand for stevia in the UK has been quite instrumental, most food and beverage manufactures are doing a lot of work behind the scenes. You can’t deny that there is too much sugar out there at the moment and stevia is a good solution to this. People want to consume less sugar and that’s where we come in, stevia brings in the natural origin alternative which is something which didn’t exist before.”

Kutz also notes that a lot of activity has been seen in the past five years, particularly in Germany. “75% of stevia launches have been in the last two years, and in Germany stevia has overtaken aspartame, it’s the third sweetener of choice in the UK its number four, in Europe aspartame and stevia are now equal so the demand is undeniable,” he explains.  

“If you are looking for something sustainable that is scalable, then stevia is a good choice of sweetener,” Kutz continues, “It’s quite unique and there aren’t many other products out there that offer zero calories, its very family friendly, and more of an everyday product.”
 
“No other sweetener on the market has this set of attributes,” he adds. 

Sigma-Beverage is available for customers to order samples and is being showcased this week at Food Matters Live in London.

by Elizabeth Kenward