Once considered a market leader for artificial sugar alternatives – before shutting its doors in 2014 – a new partner is returning sweetener brand NutraSweet to the market. But this time it’s going au naturel.
Originally made using aspartame, NutraSweet relaunched this month with a stevia-based zero calorie sweetener product named NutraSweetM, with intent to focus entirely on natural sweeteners. The announcement comes nearly five years after Massachusetts-based biotech company Manus acquired the company’s original Augusta, Georgia facility and the IP rights to the brand.
The new NutraSweetM is a Rebaudioside M (Reb M) based stevia sweetener. Reb M is a compound found in the stevia leaf, which the company said does not feature the same unpleasant aftertaste many consumers experience from Reb A-based stevia strains – currently the dominant product on the market. The company has built out a fully integrated supply chain for stevia, which includes a sourcing and extraction site in Paita, Peru and production in the U.S. at the Georgia manufacturing plant.
Manus had always intended to use the Georgia facility to produce Reb M stevia, but the company also quickly recognized an opportunity to capitalize on lingering brand recognition for NutraSweet, noted Brendan Naulty, president of sweeteners and natural ingredients at NutraSweet. The brand now operates as an independent business in partnership with Manus.
“When we first started looking at the consumer side and did some market research, it was a very highly recognized brand among older consumers, but not very much recognized by probably anybody under 30 years of age,” Naulty said. “And so that presented an opportunity to connect with some that know the brand, but also reintroduce it to those that do not know the NutraSweet brand, and reposition it into a natural brand.”
Back to the Factory
NutraSweet is now operating as an independent subsidiary and the company has hired 150 full time employees to staff the Georgia facility – including many workers who were laid off when the site closed in 2014. Naulty noted that bringing back old employees helped accelerate the relaunch, as much of the same equipment has remained in place and relatively little training was needed.
NutraSweetM will be sold both to other companies and as a consumer facing product. It will be available in 70-packs of single-serve packets and baking blends for home use, and in 1,000-count packs for foodservice. The consumer products will be available online to start, Naulty said, but the company intends to quickly roll out into retail through national grocery and specialty accounts.
When it comes to B2B, Naulty said NutraSweet will target “major brands,” noting the expanded opportunity for better-for-you products and continued anti-sugar sentiment and regulatory initiatives such as sugar taxes and added sugar labeling requirements.
“The environment that we’re working in, from a sugar perspective, is that the major brands around the world are under fire for sugar contents, and many of those large multinational companies have made sugar pledges to reduce certain percentages of sugar in their products by the year 2025,” he said. “So that’s the backdrop to the market that we’re entering into.”
Out of the Lab
While the NutraSweet brand may be widely recognized by some consumer demographics, those who remember the name will likely be recalling the company’s old synthetic aspartame products.
Alongside its old portfolio stablemate Equal, NutraSweet was at one point the leading aspartame brand in the world. Created by pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle & Co., aspartame was developed by accident in 1965 when a staff chemist stumbled onto a formula for the zero calorie sweetener while attempting to develop an anti-ulcer drug. According to a 2000 Harvard University report, the FDA first approved aspartame as a food additive in 1974 and later as an ingredient for soft drinks in 1983 – the latter proving to be a flashpoint when G.D. Searle sold over $600 million worth of aspartame under the NutraSweet and Equal brands a year later.
These explosive sales were driven by soda giants like Coke, Pepsi and 7-Up, which were seeking alternatives to the previously dominant zero calorie sweetener, saccharine, after the FDA began moving to ban it in the late 1970s due to links to bladder cancer.
After merging with Monsanto in 1985, G.D. Searle continued to invest in the NutraSweet brand as both a B2B and consumer-facing product and by 1993 the sweetener made up roughly 35% of its total business.
But the company’s exclusivity over aspartame came to an end when its patent expired in 1992. While the NutraSweet brand continued to expand over the ensuing years, weathering consistent criticism over health and safety concerns along the way, cheaper international aspartame chipped away at its market share, ultimately leading to its demise in 2014. At the time, former CEO William DeFer said low-cost aspartame imports had made it “impossible for us to sustain a profitable business.”
Bob Bloom, a 26-year veteran of the food and beverage formulation space and the former senior director of sales for WILD Flavors and Specialty Ingredients, recalled that the NutraSweet brand became ubiquitous among consumers thanks to aggressive marketing efforts during its years as a Monsanto subsidiary, including TV and print ads and, for a time, contractual requirements for brand customers to include the NutraSweet logo on their packaging. However, he questioned the long term impact of those campaigns, suggesting that it’s more important for successful sweetener brands to target corporate buyers as consumer sales reflect too small a portion of the competitive sweetener category.
As far as using the brand to produce natural products goes, Bloom said it was the right call, but also warned that stevia’s flavor challenges have often led brands to use smaller quantities, typically mixing it with other sweeteners like monk fruit or erythritol: “It’s pretty clear to me that natural is king at this point.”
Stevia Shortcomings?
Naulty said the company will focus on sampling and trial to drive sales as NutraSweetM has “phenomenal acceptance” in taste tests, suggesting the Reb M technology marks a big step forward in flavor enhancement, but a lasting negative perception of stevia’s taste has nevertheless posed a challenge for brands.
NutraSweet isn’t alone in looking to sow a positive perception of stevia, however. Last month, Amy Taylor, CEO of stevia-sweetened soft drink brand Zevia, told BevNET the company has focused heavily on educating consumers about the sweetener and encouraging both first time shoppers and those who disliked the taste in the past to try stevia again.
Naulty added that Reb M is easier and more economical to manufacture than older versions of stevia, as it doesn’t require flavor modifiers, enhancers or bitter blockers.
“Whether it’s artificial [sweeteners] or earlier versions of stevia products, they have come short on taste [compared] to sugar, and so that’s the litmus test,” Naulty said. “That’s why we say with our Reb M that it’s pretty simple to use, it’s easy to formulate with, and it comes back to that characteristic sugar-like taste.”