Nasty’ slur fails to hold aspartame sales back

Sucralose has failed to dent aspartame’s supremacy in the high intensity sweeteners market, with aspartame UK sales continuing to grow despite high-profile bans from major supermarkets, according to its leading Chinese supplier.

SinoSweet, which accounts for more than half of the Chinese production of aspartame, has just opened its first UK sales office in order to cash in on growing demand.

Although Asda, Sainsbury and M&S have all told own-label suppliers to steer clear of aspartame, overall sales have not dropped off, insisted SinoSweet UK md Richard Stead. “Aspartame costs around £10 per kg; sucralose costs £90-£100/kg, so switching is a major problem for a high-volume, low-margin business like own-label soft drinks. Manufacturers are also using aspartame to reduce sugar for cost reasons as well as calorie reduction.”

Rival aspartame supplier Ajinomoto, which has taken legal action against Asda for calling aspartame ‘nasty’, recently published the results of a large UK study suggesting that diet cola drinkers preferred aspartame to sucralose.

The fact that Coca-Cola and Cadbury reformulated Coke Light (in Scandinavia) and Diet 7-Up with sucralose and then switched straight back to using aspartame after lacklustre sales reinforced the survey results, said Ajinomoto.

Sales of Diet Coke with Splenda sucralose are also reported to be very disappointing.

However, Fusion Nutraceuticals, which recently struck a deal with Indian sucralose manufacturer Alkem, claimed that it was continuing to pick up new business in the UK. Chief executive Shane Delaney said: “The most dynamic area of the market is high volume aspartame users switching to sucralose.”

Tate & Lyle also reports that sales volume growth has been “strong and consistent with our capacity utilisation targets”, although sales values “increased at a lower rate” in the first half.

More sucralose capacity is coming online by the day, with Bangalore-based pharmaceutical giant Pharmed Medicare also claiming to be forging ahead with plans to produce industrial quantities of sucralose, although it won’t give a timescale for when this is likely to happen. Chairman Sundeep Aurora said: “We are making 5t per month, but we have plans to take that up to 500-1,000t a year.” Sucralose does have some advantages over aspartame, although volumes have not grown as quickly as analysts had originally predicted, said Credit Suisse analyst Charlie Mills: “Sucralose is heat resistant, unlike aspartame, which means it can be used in a far wider range of products.”