04 Feb 2024 Ingredion bets on Better Juice’s sugar-reduction solutions
Ingredion leads investment round to accelerate start-up’s advanced technology for naturally reducing sugar….
FoodTech start-up Better Juice has announced a collaboration with Ingredion, a leading global provider of specialty ingredients to the food and beverage industry.
Ingredion Ventures, Ingredion’s venture investment arm, will lead the Series A funding round for Better Juice which will fast-track penetration of its breakthrough sugar reduction solution into the US juice market.
In the news for a few years already, Better Juice’s innovative sugar reduction technology removes simple sugars in juice-based beverages, concentrates and other natural sugar-containing liquids.
The company’s enzymatic technology converts sugars into non-digestible compounds, such as dietary fibres and non-digestible sugars, while maintaining the natural profile of vitamins, minerals and organic acids in the final product.
“This important partnership step is truly exciting,” enthuses Gali Yarom, co-founder and co-CEO of Better Juice. “It dovetails perfectly with the Better Juice strategy to penetrate the North American market.
“Ingredion was impressed by our non-GMO technology, and its uses in a wide variety of applications. This move will open doors to leading food and beverage companies seeking sugar-reduction solutions for their products.”
Says Nate Yates, Sugar Reduction Business Leader at Ingredion: “The Better Juice technology adds a completely new dimension to our portfolio of sugar reduction solutions for food and beverage brands on a mission to meet increased consumer demand for less sugar. This technology provides manufacturers with more options to successfully reduce sugar without compromising on great taste or nutrition.”
Clean-label conversion
The environmentally friendly clean-label conversion process applies proprietary beads composed of non-GMO microorganisms which produce enzymes. These enzymes convert the juice’s composition of fruit sugars including sucrose, glucose, and fructose into better-for-you prebiotic fibres and other non-digestible molecules. This enables sugar reduction by 30 to 80 percent.
“This alliance will accelerate our go-to-market journey,” explains Eran Blachinsky, PhD, co-founder and co-CEO of Better Juice. “Ingredion’s capital support will allow us to extend the technology to other liquids with natural sources of sugar, such as milk, beer, and wine.”
This achievement follows Better Juice’s well-established partnership with GEA Group, one of the largest suppliers of food processing technology.
Primed for commercialisation
Better Juice’s solution has successfully advanced to commercial scale in the US. In recent years, it demonstrated its full proof-of-concept in collaboration with juice manufacturers in the US and Asia. These companies are now poised to progress to the next stage of commercialisation.
Better Juice reports it is now fully prepped for market entry, with a capacity to process 250-million litres of sugar reduced juice per year.
Since 2022, the groundbreaking GEA Better Juice Sugar Converter Skid is included in GEA’s test center in Ahaus, Germany. Better Juice collaborates with GEA for manufacturing the bioreactor, and together they install the technology in customers’ facilities.
“Better Juice has achieved important milestones in the past two years and has positioned itself as the leading company for reducing simple sugars from natural sources,” notes Amir Zaidman, VP of The Kitchen Hub. “The timing is perfect for serving the rapidly expanding trend of consumers striving to cut down on simple sugars in their diet.”
About Better Juice :Better Juice was founded in 2018 by a team of biochemists and microbiologists from industry and from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem with the aim of helping beverage manufacturers produce better-for-you, lower-sugar fruit juice., Their technology has accrued several patents, The company was initially funded and supported by The Kitchen Hub, Strauss Group’s food-tech incubator, and has raised $8M in seed-round investments. Better Juice now has an advanced plant set up to fully serve its clients.
Source: Better Juice