Tate & Lyle and BioHarvest to use botanical synthesis in producing plant-based ingredients

Tate & Lyle PLC and BioHarvest Sciences have announced a pioneering partnership to develop the next-generation of proprietary plant-based molecules. This aims to address increasing consumer demand for affordable, nutritious and more sustainable plant-derived food and beverage ingredients. 

BioHarvest’s botanical synthesis platform produces non-GMO plant-derived ingredients in a sustainable and economical way, to scale up the production of botanical ingredients. This proprietary process delivers patentable molecules by growing targeted plant cells which can mirror and magnify the phyto-nutrients contained in specific plants delivering all the benefits of the plant, without having to grow the plant.

Focus on sweeteners

The partnership will focus on developing the next generation of sweeteners – botanical sweetening ingredients using plant-derived molecules.  Along with the BioHarvest proprietary platform, this will meet consumer desire for a sugar-like taste – with no after-taste – and enable a wider population to have more choice when it comes to accessing ingredients that help make products healthier. The ingredient solutions will be more affordable to the food and beverage industry while using a fraction of the land and water required in traditional extraction and land-based growing practices.

Tate & Lyle brings its broad portfolio of sugar reduction solutions and years of ingredient research to the partnership, as well as its applications, nutrition and regulatory expertise, and access to global customers. The partnership forms part of Tate & Lyle’s ongoing open innovation program.  

Nick Hampton, Chief Executive, Tate & Lyle, commented:  “We are always looking to provide our customers with the latest innovation in the marketplace – this partnership with BioHarvest allows us to do just that.  Our open innovation programme is all about creating cutting-edge solutions for the food and beverage industry. By partnering with entrepreneurial innovators like BioHarvest, we aim to disrupt the future of food for the better.” 

Victoria Spadaro-Grant, Tate & Lyle’s Chief Science and Innovation Officer, said: “This partnership is very exciting for Tate & Lyle. BioHarvest provides the first and only fully validated industrial scale plant cell technology platform for production of plant metabolites. Initial exploration will focus on our sweetener platform, but our partnership also provides for expansion into other areas.” 

Ilan Sobel, CEO of BioHarvest Sciences said: “We aspire to improve human wellness by availing our plant derived molecules to hundreds of millions of people and Tate & Lyle represents an ideal partner. Tate & Lyle is a global powerhouse in food ingredient innovation, and we expect that its regulatory and nutrition expertise, industry knowledge and complementary research initiatives will help expedite and commercialise the next generation of plant-based molecules developed through our Botanical Synthesis platform.” 

Dr Yochi Hagay, CTO and Co-Founder of BioHarvest Sciences added: “This partnership forms a major milestone in the history of BioHarvest Sciences.  It follows more than 15 years of intensive R&D and manufacturing scaling of our Botanical Synthesis technology process to the point that global innovators like Tate & Lyle can now leverage our capabilities to develop new plant-derived molecules to better meet consumer demand for healthier food and beverages.”