PureCircle hails India green light for high quality sweetener

PureCircle (LON:PURE) said the Indian market is now open to the high purity stevia sweetener after the product received the regulatory green light. The country’s Food Safety and Standards Authority gave its approval for steviol glycosides on November 20. “In the notification, high purity steviol glycosides extracted from stevia leaf are approved for use in major food and beverage categories including dairy, beverages and table top sweeteners,” said PureCircle in a stock exchange announcement.  “This means effectively the India market is now open for high purity stevia to be used as an ingredient in food and beverage products.”    PureCircle runs a vertically integrated business that grows, purifies, refines and sells 17 different stevia derivatives that are used to sweeten and flavour all manner of products. It has also staked a lot future-proofing its production facilities to cope with potential demand from the likes of the big drinks makers, and developing various stevia formulations to meet the needs of a diverse customer base. In doing so, though, it has given itself a head start on competitors that have taken varying strategies, including one that hoped to turn stevia into a household name in much the same way as Tate & Lyle did with Sucralose. This approach met with limited success. PureCircle, by contrast, is going gangbusters and commands 75% of the stevia market. Its lead in the field of natural sweeteners is protected by the intellectual property it owns. It has 65 patents granted and 170 are pending that should prevent competitors trying to copy the way it produces its various natural sweetener formulations. The opportunity, meanwhile, is growing. Stevia is being used in diet drinks and also as a flavouring. And of course India provides an opportunity to expand its already large geographic footprint.

Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei "Proactiveinvestors"