As consumers continue to watch their calorie intake and strive to live a healthier lifestyle, food and beverage manufacturers are in need of great-tasting, zero-calorie sweeteners to help them achieve these goals. To meet this demand, Avansya, the joint venture between Cargill and Royal DSM, started production at the first commercial-scale fermentation facility for stevia sweeteners in the US. The facility is producing EverSweet™, a non-artificial, zero-calorie stevia sweetener.
The $50 million fermentation facility is located in Blair, Neb., and is operated by Cargill. It produces highly sought-after, sweet-tasting molecules, such as Reb M and Reb D used to make EverSweet, and gives food and beverage manufacturers an even more scalable, sustainable and low cost-in-use solution than if these molecules were extracted from the stevia leaf. The market for high-intensity sweeteners produced by fermentation is expected to exceed $3 billion by 2025.
EverSweet’s clean taste profile is well-suited for use in products such as yogurt, chocolate milk, soft drinks, ice cream, cereal, bars and confections. Avansya has commercial volumes available and is already supplying EverSweet to various customers. Further consumer products will launch in the coming months across multiple market segments. Over 300 customer trials and product development projects are currently in progress.
EverSweet is GRAS and FEMA GRAS approved for use in food and beverage products in the US and Mexico and additional regulatory approvals for use in other countries are underway.
