KEY INTERVIEW: Making Stevia a Mainstream Sweetener

11 Aug 2014 --- PureCircle claims to be the global leader in the production and marketing of high purity stevia ingredients. The company works with the natural sweetener stevia on a huge scale and the stevia plant is grown for the company across South America, Africa, Asia and the United States. FoodIngredientsFirst caught up with the company’s new chief operating officer, Jordi Ferre, to find out more.

PureCircle has a bold company vision, which is for stevia to become a mainstream sweetener for food and beverage products around the world.

In his new role, the company’s chief operating officer Jordi Ferre says this will be the main focus for the future.

“This will be a big focus of mine now – we have established the ingredient but the most important thing now is to make sure the supply chain is in full sync to continue supplying the growth of the industry – planning and forecasting is now essential.”

Ferre explains that the company hit a turning point about five years ago, when major companies started adopting stevia and reformulating some of their core brands.

This meant that for the past five years Pure Circle worked hard to improve stevia’s taste and supply chain scalability and sustainability, in order to “make mainstreaming stevia a reality,” says Ferre.

Leaf supply is a concern, and it’s something Pure Circle has been investing heavily in over the past five years.

“The market has probably not yet fully caught up on the supply concerns,” he says. “We are leading this industry at Pure Circle – we have done a good job but now is the time to accelerate and to be able to ensure enough supply of leaf to meet demand.”

Part of the investment into leaf supply included expanding out of China and into other areas.
“We have worked with Kenya and other places more, but we need to accelerate this investment,” he explains.

Other areas of focus:
Growing the consumer recognition of stevia was also part of the growth strategy.

The US – being one of the first countries that approved stevia – and France have good recognition, according to Pure Circle’s consumer research.

“And there are other countries which have used lower quality stevia for a while, such as China. They use lower grade stevia for separate applications. Other countries, such as Latin America, are growing in terms of total consumer awareness of stevia, and the fact stevia awareness is getting through to those places is positive.”

Regulatory approvals continue to go through, so while it is a mature market there are still countries such as Canada where stevia has only been approved for the past year.

“India hasn’t yet approved stevia. This will occur at the end of this year, but we are still waiting for South East Asia. It’s a matter of time, and they will follow with the same growing awareness once it is approved.”

Pure Circle is very confident about its business model, says Ferre, but he is aware that eventually the company will have to start focusing on increasing capacity.

“We need to make it more global,” he says. “We don’t want to change our model as it is successful but we need to go to the next stage. We need to scale it up and diversify.”

A pipeline of new products is on the horizon though, he promises, and innovation is a key part of the company’s agenda.

“It’s two-fold. One is on a supply chain level, where we want to use more of the whole leaf. Secondly we want to innovate in order to help customers formulate in a variety of applications. In beverages for example we work with customers to look at how many calories or how much sugar they intend to reduce – so we have to keep innovating to help with this. It is complex.”

Even within existing food categories (such as beverages) there are a number of things Pure Circle can innovate in but aside from this there is good potential in dairy. “Adoption in dairy is accelerating because products have a more natural image so stevia fits well with those,” he explains.

There are also several untapped areas of the market, he points out. Areas within confectionery, such as chewing gum, have a lot of potential for stevia.

“We as an industry haven’t really tapped into this much,” he admits.

There is also a lot of growth still in beverages, particularly in new countries for stevia, such as India and South East Asia when those markets open up.

“The global beverage industry has high potential and along the way there will be a number of original businesses which will follow suit. The beverage industry is the main area and we are looking at that on a global perspective.”

How can Pure Circle hold off the competition?
Ferre is confident Pure Circle will continue to lead the way in stevia, despite the fact that enhanced recognition is drawing more and more competition as others seek to grab a share of this growth market.

“We offer a number of things others don’t, including a 12-year head start in this industry,” he explains. “Secondly, we are focused 100% on the development of stevia. Stevia is not part of another division of a big company. We are relentlessly focused on developing this global market. We always think about how to make it better.

“Yes there are a lot of new players but actually many of them are following us to see what we are doing.”

The future of stevia
“I think the head start we have is important and we are not sitting here thinking we have achieved our goal,” he notes. “It’s a big ingredient which will be a staple in most diets in the future.”

“The message is that we are here to stay and it will be a mainstream ingredient in a mainstream market.

“Today, we can say that the results of all this hard work are starting to pay off, and we are entering a future with exponential growth and a full adoption of products sweetened with stevia.”

by Sonya Hook