Some of the world's agribusiness giants are bolstering their efforts to develop a sugar alternative that approximates the real thing without artificial ingredients.
Bloomberg reported this week that as the nascent stevia industry grows — despite a sometimes bitter aftertaste — Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland and ED&F Man are working on new, better-tasting incarnations of the plant.
ADM — which, the publication noted, is a top producer of embattled sweetener high-fructose corn syrup — continues to work on its Sweetright stevia brand.
ED&F Man, meanwhile, plans to introduce a new product "virtually indistinguishable" from sugar this year, while Cargill — which introduced the plant to the U.S. market in 2008 — will unveil the next version of its EverSweet brand next year.
Stevia is about 200 times sweeter than sugar but can be processed into a zero-calorie sweetener. As a plant-based, low-calorie sweetener, it could represent a Holy Grail for food companies as health-conscious consumers turn away from both conventional sweeteners and from artificial alternatives like aspartame, sucralose and xylitol.
Although the stevia market still pales in comparison to sugar, Bloomberg noted that consumption tripled between 2011 and 2016 as more than 10,000 new products containing the sweetener hit the market.
Stevia is now worth about $4 billion worldwide and can be found in some of the world's most iconic foods, including variants of Heinz ketchup and Coca-Cola.
“This is a market that has huge growth potential,” ED&F Man's Jonathan Hugh told Bloomberg. "We see a lot of investment opportunities."