Tate & Lyle backs sucralose in soft drinks

Sales of some diet drinks sweetened with sucralose were disappointing not because of fundamental problems with the sweetener but because of insufficient care over formulation, Tate & Lyle has argued.

Its comments came as Asda admitted some of its own-label soft drinks “suffered a significant decline in sales” after suppliers were told to switch from aspartame to sucralose in a clean-label initiative.

Leading brands including Coca-Cola Light and Diet 7-Up switching to sucralose and then reverting to aspartame in some markets has also dampened confidence in the sweetener.

This has been reinforced by the startling admission from Asda during its legal dispute with aspartame supplier Ajinomoto that “consumers generally prefer the sweetening flavour of aspartame to that of sucralose”

However, manufacturers had often not spent enough time optimising their formulations before marketing products, said Tate & Lyle’s manager for sweetener technology development Mary Quinlan.

She added: “I don’t actually like some of the [sucralose-sweetened] products in the US. The problem is, some of the early products were over-sweetened. They didn’t optimise the sweetness. While sucralose is 600 times sweeter than sugar, you can’t just divide the amount of sugar you use by 600, put in that amount of sucralose and launch your product.”

Quinlan, who was speaking at a reformulation symposium in London last week, added: “It’s actually quite frustrating because if you get it right, sucralose has so many advantages over aspartame. It is far more stable in cola drinks throughout its shelf-life and has a flavour profile far closer to that of sugar.” After six months, colas sweetened with aspartame and stored at 20 degrees suffered a significant drop in sweetness and have a more unbalanced flavour profile.”

She added: “But you’ve got to get the sweetness level right. For example, the types of acids used have a significant impact on the potency of sucralose. You get the same sweetness effect by using 76ppm of sucralose in a phosphoric acid system as you get from using 86ppm in water, for example.”

She declined to comment on the strategies of the UK retailers that have asked own-label suppliers to switch from aspartame to sucralose. But she said that Asda had chosen to use sweetener blends, while Sainsbury and Marks & Spencer had taken a different approach.

Meanwhile Tate & Lyle bosses insisted they would fight on in the patent infringement case against rival sucralose suppliers, despite last week’s unfavourable ruling from the International Trade Commission (ITC).

Tate & Lyle claims the sucralose manufacturing process used by Chinese rivals infringes its vast suite of patents. However, in a preliminary ruling ahead of a (binding) final judgement in January 2009, a judge at the ITC in Washington DC did not agree.

While Tate & Lyle acknowledged that “the majority” of ITC preliminary judgements stood, there had been successful appeals in the past, it claimed. General counsel Robert Gibber said: “We would not have proceeded unless we believed we had adequate evidence to demonstrate our patents were being infringed. We intend to petition for an appeal of the decision by the full commission.”

The judgement is the latest in a series of blows for Tate & Lyle. Last month it admitted it had run into problems commissioning equipment at a wet corn mill in the US and was parting company with its finance director.

However, sales volume growth in sucralose remained “strong and consistent with our longer-term capacity utilisation target” despite a downturn in the number of new product launches, insisted chief executive Iain Ferguson.