Next generation sweeteners to be devised in Tate & Lyle partnership with BioHarvest Sciences
A: A Tate & Lyle scientist blending ingredients for its product ranges. Pic: Tate & Lyle
A major new partnership between ingredients business Tate & Lyle PLC and botanical synthesis specialists, BioHarvest Sciences, has set out its vision to create the next generation of plant-based industry sweetening products, writes Neill Barston.
As the duo explained, their combined aspiration is to innovate in response to heightened demand for affordable healthier ranges, including for snacks and confectionery that have higher nutritional values than many items across food categories.
Notably, BioHarvest’s sustainably focused Botanical Synthesis platform has been developed to produce non-GMO plant-derived ingredients in a more sustainable and economically viable way, helping to scale up the production of highly beneficial botanical ingredients. This proprietary process delivers patentable molecules by growing targeted plant cells which can mirror and magnify the phyto-nutrients contained in specific plants, delivering all the benefits of the plant, without having to grow the plant.
The new partnership between Tate & Lyle and BioHarvest will focus on developing the next generation of sweeteners – botanical sweetening ingredients using plant-derived molecules. Along with the BioHarvest proprietary platform, this will meet consumer desire for a sugar-like taste – with no after-taste – and enable a wider population to have more choice when it comes to accessing ingredients that help make products healthier. The ingredient solutions will be more affordable to the food and beverage industry while using a fraction of the land and water required in traditional extraction and land-based growing practices.
Tate & Lyle brings its broad portfolio of sugar reduction solutions and years of ingredient research to the partnership, as well as its applications, nutrition and regulatory expertise, and access to global customers. The partnership forms part of Tate & Lyle’s ongoing open innovation programme.
Nick Hampton, Chief Executive, Tate & Lyle, commented: “We are always looking to provide our customers with the latest innovation in the marketplace – this partnership with BioHarvest allows us to do just that. Our open innovation programme is all about creating cutting-edge solutions for the food and beverage industry. By partnering with entrepreneurial innovators like BioHarvest, we aim to disrupt the future of food for the better.”
Victoria Spadaro-Grant, Tate & Lyle’s Chief Science and Innovation Officer, also welcomed the new partnership as a key development for the two enterprises. She said: “This partnership is very exciting for Tate & Lyle. BioHarvest provides the first and only fully validated industrial scale plant cell technology platform for production of plant metabolites. Initial exploration will focus on our sweetener platform, but our partnership also provides for expansion into other areas.”
