March 16, 2023

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

Sweetener brand Splenda and its parent company Heartland Food Products Group announced the official launch of Splenda Stevia Farm – a 1,465-acre fully integrated, eco-conscious farm now operating in Central Florida. 

Driven by the trend toward a more healthy lifestyle and diet, 72 percent of consumers have targeted sugar as a key ingredient to try to reduce from their food and beverage choices, and 45 percent stated that reducing sugar consumption was their top goal for 2022, according to Kris Sollid, RD, senior director, nutrition communications, International Food Information Council (IFIC). 

Given these concerns and consumer trends, partnered with the prevalence of diabetes and obesity, food and beverage companies are turning to alternatives like stevia that enable the reduction of sugar content and calories in products.

Native to South America, stevia extract is a natural, zero-calorie, high-intensity sweetener derived from the leaf of the plant that is up to 350 times sweeter than sugar and requires far less land, water, and inputs compared to sugarcane to bring the same sweetness to market.

However, all stevia has been grown and processed from markets outside of the U.S. – mainly China. This new farm’s operations will now give U.S. farmers an opportunity to grow and process stevia right on their own farms.

“At Splenda, our mission is to help people live happier, healthier and longer lives by making it easier to reduce sugar. By growing higher-quality stevia plants and producing better and sweeter-tasting stevia sweeteners, we can help consumers achieve their sugar reduction goals,” said Ted Gelov, chairman & CEO, Heartland. 

“Additionally, by growing stevia in the U.S., we are helping to build a new American agriculture industry and bring more farming jobs and economic prosperity to Central Florida with this $50 million initial investment.”

With an aim to produce superior tasting stevia sweetener while also building an emerging U.S. agriculture industry, since inception Splenda Stevia Farm has focused on decreasing the environmental impacts of the process by eliminating unnecessary CO2 emissions caused by existing stevia supply chain operations. 

From the jump, the management team has designed the farm to be eco-conscious by engineering socially responsible farming techniques, including water conservation and waste management measures, with the power to reshape the impact that processing has on the environment. 

Due to being vertically integrated, Splenda is able to oversee every step of production from crop propagation to the extraction of sweet glycosides from the leaves.

Grown from cuttings from mother plants with the strongest properties of producing the sweetest and best tasting stevia, the leaves are harvested and steeped in fresh water before the stevia is extracted with the water and filtered, leaving pure stevia glycosides. 

“Splenda’s consistency of sweetness from acre-to-acre is the result of our all-natural process, without genetic engineering, that utilizes the propagation of mother plants with the sweetest combinations of stevia glycosides,” said Ricardo Reyes, EVP, global manufacturing, quality and R&D, Heartland Food Products. 

“Splenda has been investing in the natural breeding of stevia plants for more than 20 years, producing stevia plants with a variety of flavor profiles that can be used to develop customized sweetener blends.”

The resulting sweetener is a high-quality, low-calorie, non-bitter sweetener grown by U.S. farmers, and the left-over leaves are then pulled from the steeping tanks and dried for use as nutrient-rich animal feed, creating a sustainable, circular system without creating any waste. 

“The approach we’ve engineered with our Splenda Stevia Farm gives U.S. farmers an opportunity to grow and process stevia right on their own farms,” said Gelov. “Our ultimate goal is to help Americans cut unwanted sugar from their diets by 25 percent or more by the year 2030.”

~ Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor in chief with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, as well as HighQuest Group’s Unconventional Ag. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com.

*The content put forth by Global AgInvesting News and its parent company HighQuest Partners is intended to be used and must be used for informational purposes only. All information or other material herein is not to be construed as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Global AgInvesting and HighQuest Partners are not a fiduciary in any manner, and the reader assumes the sole responsibility of evaluating the merits and risks associated with the use of any information or other content on this site.