PureCircle spotlights stevia taste and costs as consumer palates "adapt"
24 Apr 2024 | PureCircle by Ingredion
Kurt Callaghan, global strategic director for sugar reduction at PureCircle, discusses the challenges and cost drivers of the alternative sweetener industry. He shines light on how stevia helps brands bring a “natural positioning” to their products while optimizing costs through different combinations of stevia glycosides for a given application. Kurt also addresses stevia’s clean label potential and PureCircle’s bioconversion technology for better-tasting stevia.
Hi, this is Inha Noreen from CNS Media, journalist at Food Ingredients First.
We recently reported that Ingredients stevia subsidiary Pure Circle has acquired Chinese plant breeders' rights for its proprietary stevia plant variety, and today I'm pleased to be joined by Kurt Callahan, global strategic director for sugar reduction at Pure Circle.
A very warm welcome to you, Kurt.
Thanks, Ina.
Happy to be here.
Same here.
So, Kurt, I just wanted to start by asking you about the latest trends and issues that you feel are impacting the alternative sweetener industry.
Sure.
Yeah, I think, it's been a wild year in, in the world of sugar reduction.
You know, the a lot of news came out last year on, the artificials from the WHO and others.
But at the same time, the, the price of artificial sweeteners is at record lows.
In our business, it's about taste and cost.
And most artificials taste pretty good, and the cost is very low.
So it's been more challenging than expected for stevia to continue.
To gain market share, in the world of sweeteners.
But in the long run, we're still very bullish on, the, the prospects for stevia, and we continue to invest in innovation to improve the taste and drive down the cost to, to, to close that gap.
Yeah.
And as I previously mentioned, Pure Circle recently received the plant breeders' rights for your stevia plant in China.
What do you think its significance is for the company as a whole?
Yeah, we're, we're really excited about the PBR grant.
It's, it's a really big milestone for us.
Pure Circle has been investing in, R&D in the stevia genome, in plant, varietal development for for over 20 years.
You know, we, we have largely driven, the innovation in the stevia varietals.
And that's brought a massive reduction in the raw material costs of stevia, which is the biggest cost component in the stevia sweetener.
And so this PBR grant in China really recognizes Pure Circle as the innovator, as the developer, for of the stevia varietal that the the vast majority of the stevia industry has benefited from.
And ultimately that's benefited our our customers, the food and beverage brands, and that ultimately benefits the consumer, through great tasting and and affordably priced, finished products.
And, and so really this grant is recognition of two decades of work, and we don't plan to slow down.
We plan to continue to invest in stevia varietal development, to, to keep improving it for everybody throughout the value chain.
And that, that sounds wonderful.
And if we talk about stevia as a sweetener substitute, how do you think it is different from the other alternatives that are available in the market for replacing sugar?
Yeah, obviously zero calorie, zero sugar, versus the other, zero calorie, zero sugar, stevia is naturally sourced, right?
So it's actually on the ground on a farm.
There are farming communities, agrarian societies in China that, are largely the, the local economy is largely based upon, the stevia leaf and farming.
And, and it brings that natural positioning to a brand that we know consumers in many countries prefer.
And what our consumer insights have shown over the past few years is that a lot of consumers are willing to pay more, for that naturally sourced positioning, zero calories, zero sugar.
So we, there's definitely a, a, a consumer demand for it that continues to grow.
Yeah.
And, when it comes to stevia curd, I've often read that sometimes consumer perceive a kind of a metallic taste with it, like, not the taste, but kind of an aftertaste when they consume it.
What do you have to say about that?
Does it impact your innovation practices and what are, what does, and how can companies improve on it?
Yeah, yeah.
No, it's a great question, and, and it's one that we spend a lot of time and effort on.
I would broaden that your statement a little bit because I would say that most all high potency sweeteners have some off taste, whether it be bitterness or a linger or a licorice, type of flavor.
But the artificial high potency sweeteners have been on the market for much longer.
And consumer palates adapt, right?
They adapt to what they consume a lot of, and what they consume regularly.
And then that becomes the preference, right?
So taste is, taste is an It's very individual, it's always changing, and it's always evolving.
You know, that, that said, the, I'll call it the, the old generation of stevia rabbe, which is the majority of the market still today, it definitely has a, a bitterness, an aftertaste.
The way I like to think about it is with rebbe you can achieve 20%, roughly 20% sugar reduction.
Without any negative impact on the taste.
But if you go beyond 20% reduction, that's where some of those qualities start to show, especially with a sensitive taster.
And we've really been focused, as I said, on all of our innovation on taste and costs.
And when it comes to taste, you know, we've got bioconversion technology, which allows us to get to RBM, REBD, the other better tasting stevia glycosides in an economic way.
And what we've done recently is launched our clean taste solutions.
So, this is combinations of stevia glycosides, the different stevia molecules, at, you know, different ratios to bring the best taste at an optimized cost for a given application.
So for a specific flavor profile, for a dairy product, for a a bakery product.
And this has really resonated with our customers.
We can, we can achieve a significantly better taste, than the, than the, the Rebbe stevia, and we're doing so at, at a competitive price point at the same time.
And I, that really sounds interesting.
Thanks for clarifying so.
And what are some of pure circles products that you want to talk about, which can help food and beverage manufacturers meet the clean label demands that are very much in trend nowadays and consumers often, often look for the clean label on the back of their packaging, product.
Yeah, Stevie is obviously a great label.
It's very country specific, and in many ways it's, it's specific to a given brand as , what they choose to label.
We have plenty of consumer insights showing how Stevie is the preferred.
The preferred label for, , non-nutritive sweeteners.
As I said, in terms of our innovations, clean taste solutions is really, the our our optimized stevia solutions for a given application.
And then our newest innovation, which will be rolling out over the course of this quarter, is our clean taste solubility solution.
So this is a, a brand new molecule, really exciting combination, great taste, and really high solubility.
So it unlocks some potential applications and, flexibility in our customers' manufacturing and supply chains, to, you know, to concentrate stevia at levels that we really haven't been able to as an industry historically.
I also, I, I kind of want to go back to your last question a little bit because I'd be remiss to, to not mention that the fact that a lot of our clean taste solutions in, in, in specific applications at the right level, we can outperform artificial high potency sweeteners today.
We're doing a big study right now, all over the world.
Over the next year or two, we'll start to share these results more and more.
But we are putting our money where our mouth is, and proving that our clean taste solutions are preferred, by a lot of consumers, if not the majority of consumers, when compared to, the artificial high potency sweeteners.
So we're really excited about those results and and excited to share those with the industry, over the coming months here.
Sounds wonderful.
And what do you think, what are the application areas of your CVR solutions or what kind of food industry would be able to use them?
Yeah, so, beverage is the biggest category.
So all beverages, we see a lot of sports nutrition, so both like powdered beverages, and, sports nutrition bars.
Dairy has, dairy was definitely an early adopter of stevia, a lot of, a lot of yogurts, a lot of ice creams, leveraged stevia along with functional build back ingredients like erythritol, allulose, or some of the soluble fibers to bring a complete solution.
And we're seeing more and more in confectionery and sauces as.
So whether it be Gummies, on the confectionary side, or, you know, salad dressings, , in, in kind of that savory, dressing space.
So it's really the vast majority of food and beverage applications.
Basically anywhere that a sweetener has been used historically, stevia can play a role, to, to bring a great value prop to consumers.
Yeah.
And if we talk about the future of sugar alternative, what do you think we can expect to see in the future and what kind of R&D and innovations are companies working on?
Like what is the overall future of the alternative sweetener industry according to you?
So for for for pure circle by ingredient, it's all about taste and cost.
So that every major investment and innovation project that we work on, comes down to improving the taste, or reducing the cost, or both.
We, we're doing this, you know, through our clean taste solutions, bringing the different stevia molecules together at optimized ratios.
We're doing this through new stevia molecules.
We're doing this through the bioconversion and biotransformation technologies, to improving efficiencies, driving down costs while getting to those best tasting stevia glycosides.
And then we're doing it on the on the farm, right?
Through the stevia varietal.
So the, the PBR that we were granted here for our PCS 13 varietal is really just the beginning.
We have a very robust pipeline of other stevia varietals, to increase yields, to increase the, the stevia molecules of choice.
As as to help stevia grow beyond China.
So helping our diversification strategy of the stevia leaf itself.
So we've got a lot of exciting innovation products.
I, I highlighted a lot of the buckets, but they all, they all drive towards improving the taste and or reducing the cost of our stevia solutions.
Yeah, that sounds really great.
And also, if you, I think you just mentioned your bioconversion method for extracting, your stevia solution.
Do you want to expand a bit more about it?
What do you wanna know?
A little bit of detail about the technology and how it extracts stevia and how can it be a cost effective method because you focus on cost reduction, yeah, yeah, perfect.
No, thank you.
So.
So to get to stevia rabbe, right?
You, you start with the leaf, you extract out the rebbe and the other major steviva glycosides, and you purify it to rebbe.
That's still the majority of the market today.
For, and if you wanted to do that same process to get to the better tasting stevia glycosides, like RBM or RED, for example, It would be very expensive and inefficient, cause RBM and REbD occur in such small quantities in the stevia leaf.
You know, RBA can be 10 to 15% of the leaf, whereas rebM or REbD is around 1% of the leaf.
So that difference is how much on a factor basis, your costs would go up, just by, by using the the traditional extraction, manufacturing methodologies.
So what bioconversion allows us to do is to, the process starts the same, right?
We farm, we harvest the stevia leaf, we do the initial extraction, and then we bring in the bioconversion process, which allows us to , basically use enzymes to attach glucose molecules and convert.
Reb A to Reb D or RebM.
So it's much more economical to get there to these better tasting stevia glycosides.
We have less of an impact on the environment, which our LCA has shown.
And we're also still maintaining the naturally sourced value proposition, of stevia.
So it's, it's a really powerful technology, and we continue to, to scale it up, larger scale, make the processes more efficient, and, and add to our portfolio of target stevia glycosides through that process.
OK, thank you so much for explaining it so clearly with.
Really good to know the interesting facts behind, behind how it all comes to the final product.
And I think that's all I needed to ask you.
So thanks a lot for your time and have a nice day.
