Chicago, Dec. 09, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- PureCircle (LSE: PURE), the world's leading producer and innovator of great-tasting stevia ingredients for the global beverage and food industries, announces several important new developments which will further support its customers in their creation of zero-added sugar and reduced-sugar products.
PureCircle is now introducing a new stevia ingredient, which will be extremely valuable to beverage and food companies. Called Sigma Syrup, this optimized blend of our next generation stevia leaf ingredients, including Reb M, is proprietary to PureCircle. Sigma Syrup provides superior taste and overcomes solubility challenges encountered when using other stevia sweeteners in products which are high in sweetness intensity, such as syrups and liquid tabletop sweeteners. Sigma Syrup is made from the stevia leaf and is non-GMO. Like PureCircle’s Reb M next generation sweetener, Sigma Syrup has a clean, sugar-like taste.
Recently, PureCircle also announced a new proprietary varietal of stevia plants. Carefully cultivated by PureCircle and successfully field-tested, this new stevia varietal naturally yields greater quantities of our great-tasting next generation stevia ingredients. This breakthrough -- increasing the effective yield of PureCircle’s stevia plants -- enhances the company’s production efficiency, and further improves its ability to deliver a sustainable, cost effective supply of these next generation stevia leaf ingredients to food and beverage companies. This allows brand owners to develop more accessible, healthier products for a wider range of consumer price points.
In addition, to enhance its customer support to Latin America food and beverage companies, the Company is opening a new office and innovation lab in Brazil. The facility located in Sao Paulo will provide formulation support to PureCircle’s customers in Latin America. As the world’s leading stevia company, PureCircle has expertise in formulating with stevia and works to share that expertise with its customers. The new office will provide PureCircle customers increased speed to market, and stevia formulation expertise catered specifically to the needs of the South American market. This helps zero-added sugar and reduced sugar products to market which taste great and that are naturally sweetened.
PureCircle’s stevia expertise enables it to extract and offer for sale other ingredients from the stevia leaf, including flavor modifiers and antioxidants for use in functional products. In addition, PureCircle is working toward the commercialization of stevia-based protein and fiber ingredients in 2020.
Due to PureCircle’s innovation strength, it now holds globally 214 patents related to stevia. The Company continues to invest in innovation, and is continuously looking to the stevia plant for new ingredient solutions.
All PureCircle ingredients begin with the stevia plant. A sweetener is a “stevia leaf sweetener” only if it starts with the stevia plant. Other stevia-like ingredients produced in laboratories by others are not stevia leaf ingredients.
The Company works with farmers globally to grow and source its proprietary stevia plants. PureCircle’s agricultural programs, not only provide the company with high-quality stevia, but also help support sustainability and farm communities.
About PureCircle
- PureCircle is the only company that combines advanced R&D with full vertical integration from farm to high-quality, great-tasting innovative stevia sweeteners.
- The Company collaborates with farmers who grow the stevia plants and with food and beverage companies which seek to improve their low- and no-calorie formulations using a sweetener from plants.
- PureCircle will continue to: lead in research, development and innovation; produce a growing supply of multiple varieties of stevia sweeteners with sugar-like taste, using all necessary and appropriate methods of production; and be a resource and innovation partner for food and beverage companies.
- PureCircle stevia flavor modifiers work in synergy with sweeteners to improve the taste, mouthfeel and calorie profile, and enhance the cost effectiveness, of beverage and food products.
- Founded in 2002, PureCircle is continually investing in breakthrough research and development and it has been granted over 214 stevia-related patents with more than 300 applied for patents pending.
- PureCircle has offices around the world with the global headquarters in Chicago, Illinois.
- To meet growing demand for stevia sweeteners, PureCircle is rapidly ramping up its supply capability. It completed expansion of its Malaysian stevia extract facility in March 2017, increasing its capacity to rapidly supply the newer and great-tasting specialty stevia sweeteners and helping provide ever-increasing value to its customers.
- PureCircle’s shares are listed on the main market of the London Stock Exchange.
- For more information, visit: www.purecircle.com
About stevia
- Given the growing global concerns about obesity and diabetes, beverage and food companies are working responsibly to reduce sugar and calories in their products, responding to both consumers and health and wellness advocates. Sweeteners from the stevia plant offer sugar-like taste and are becoming an increasingly important tool for these companies.
- Like sugar, stevia sweeteners are from plants. But unlike sugar, they enable low-calorie and zero-calorie formulations of beverages and foods.
- Stevia leaf extract is a natural-based, zero calorie, high-intensity sweetener, used by global food and beverage companies as a great-tasting zero-calorie alternative to sugar and artificial sweeteners.
- Stevia is a naturally sweet plant native to South America; today, it is grown around the world, notably in Kenya, China and the US.
- The sweet-tasting parts of the stevia leaf are up to 350 times sweeter than sugar: stevia’s high-intensity sweetness means it requires far less water and land than sugar.
- Research has shown that the molecules of the stevia leaf are present and unchanged in the dried stevia leaf, through the commercial extraction and purification process, and in the final stevia leaf extract product. All major global regulatory organisations, across 65 countries, have approved the use of high-purity stevia leaf extracts in food and beverages.
- For more information on the science of stevia, please visit https://www.purecirclesteviainstitute.com/
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