Insight. Some people think of it as the proverbial light bulb. A random act of brilliance. But Thomas Edison knew better. He said, “opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” In other words, you have to work at insight. A belief that Cargill took to heart when it set off on the road to launch of Truvia™ sweetener.

Did consumers want more choice?

In 2004, Cargill had a hunch: that there was unmet consumer demand for a great tasting, zero calorie sweetener from natural origins. And it had a candidate. A small team of Cargill employees working under the code name “Alfalfa” had investigated a high-intensity sweetener made from the leaves of a South American herb called stevia. The leaves had been used for centuries to sweeten beverages in South America and as a crude extract it has been used in Asia as a sweetener for decades.

The sweetness in the stevia leaf comes from glycosides. The plant makes about a dozen glycosides, and some are sweet while others are quite bitter. The team found a way to concentrate the glycoside, called reb-A, that provides the best tasting sweetness. Truvia™ sweetener is 97 percent reb-A, an ingredient named rebiana. But the team first had to verify that there was a market.

In 2006 and 2007, Cargill decided to test the idea. It conducted a consumer survey among 15,000 people on four continents and seven countries. It produced reams of data, both qualitative and quantitative. After sifting through the results, the verdict was clear: consumers around the globe wanted a new choice in zero calorie sweetness.

Search for balance

The data showed a demand that mirrored a larger, societal trend: the search for balance. Consumers and commercial customers were paying closer and closer attention to where their food came from, how the people who grew it were treated and how the food was made and transported. There was a nascent desire for sustainable products and supply chain transparency. In short, they wanted to buy food products that didn’t throw the world off balance to make them.

This search for balance was also personal. Consumers have a complex relationship with sweetness that is best described as a combination of attraction and guilt. They wanted zero calorie and great taste in their sweetener. They didn’t want to have to choose between one and the other, between guilt and pleasure, health and happiness.

Growing a business with connectivity

Armed with this insight, Cargill went to work. This wasn’t the first time the company had been involved in a market in its infancy –or had to build a supply chain from the ground up. For more than 145 years, Cargill has been developing markets for food and food ingredients.

This experience gave Cargill an edge that it calls connectivity. It was the numerous connections within the company that made Truvia possible. While other companies are obliged to sign alliances and partnerships for research, applications, production and distribution, Cargill is the only company in the market to handle the product from Field to Table. For example, Cargill Flavor Systems played a key role in developing the tabletop product and is involved with numerous customers on flavour systems using rebiana or stevia components. Cargill Health & Nutrition provides the Zerose® erythritol that is part of the recipe of Truvia™ tabletop sweetener. These are only two of the many Cargill businesses that contributed to the brand’s success.

Speaking of success, the Truvia brand has rapidly established itself as one of the market’s leading zero calorie sweeteners. The brand name is recognized by 60 per cent of female consumers in the US and the tabletop product has an eleven per cent share of the sugar substitute market. It is used today in juices, yogurt, ice cream, soft drinks and energy drinks, jam and mints made by many of the world’s leading food companies. Just two years after its launch, Truvia™ tabletop sweeteer is poised to become the No. 2 zero-calorie sweetener in the consumer sugar substitute category in the US. Not bad for a hunch and a humble shrub from South America.

While the Truvia™ brand has a simple message of delivering, zero calories and naturally derived sweetness from a natural source, the business itself is anything but simple. The idea of creating a natural sweetener from the leaf of a plant was appealing, but the viability of the product would depend on credibility and transparency of “natural” claims and origin.

Built-in sustainability

There is more to producing Truvia™ than a series of steps in a flow chart. Behind the scenes, everything is done along the way with sustainability in mind—from environmental practices to the way the growers are treated—in order to meet the Truvia™ brand promise.

The vision of sustainability is very clear. If farmers cannot count on a consistent market for their crops, the business is not sustainable. If the crops themselves do not produce the best sweetener in the most efficient way possible, the business is not sustainable. If it takes too much energy and costs too much to extract and transport the sweetener, the business is not sustainable. And if customers and consumers cannot count on ingredients and products that are safe, and of the highest quality and consistency, the business is not sustainable.

To ensure this path is clear, the Truvia™ business has a fulltime sustainability manager. As part of her job she tracks the carbon footprint of the business, which aims to be carbon neutral by 2020 and has aggressive 2020 goals to reduce net depletion of water by 25 per cent and to bring waste to zero.

In Argentina, Cargill’s partner is a co-op of 8,000 farmers. Together they have set sustainable agricultural standards for stevia that cover everything from pesticide use to fertilizer, from composting to recycling—and everything has a paper trail. The business prides itself on paying a fair price to its growers. It also provides community services, scholarships for their children, improvements for local schools and technical agricultural support.

Operating with Transparency

Sustainability is nothing without transparency. If stevia-based sweeteners become associated with poor agricultural practices food safety problems or unfair labour practices, the whole industry will suffer. That’s why Cargill operates the Truvia™ business with full transparency.

For example, Cargill is a voluntary member of the Supplier Ethical Data Exchange program, which includes third-party audits. It shares the results of the independent audits with its customers. It also recently led the establishment of the International Stevia Council, and the leader of the Truvia™ enterprise sits on its board of directors as well as on the executive committee. The council is the authoritative voice of the stevia industry and oversees industry practices in specifications and analytical quality testing protocols.

Finally, transparency also extends to listening to critics. For example, Cargill hosts roundtable discussions with members of NGOs and other stakeholders to get their opinions about the entire supply chain of Truvia™ sweetener. Further proof of the company’s on-going commitment to sustainability and being publicly accountable for reaching its standards.