Leveraging Strengths
Acquisition of Continental Custom Ingredients
strengthens Tate & Lyle’s value to the dairy industry.
Apart, they were trading
partners serving a common industry. Together, they’re a formidable
force better equipped to tackle common goals.
Global ingredients manufacturer Tate &
Lyle’s acquisition of Continental Custom Ingredients (CCI), Sycamore,
Ill., earlier this year is expected to bring the company new expertise in
the areas of dairy stabilizers, hydrocolloids systems, emulsifiers,
vitamins and flavors. CCI is now trading as Tate & Lyle Custom
Ingredients.
“We have been a customer of Tate & Lyle for
many years and are pleased to build upon our relationship. Being part of a
global ingredients business will promote faster growth, open up
international markets, and ensure we realize the full potential of our
strong team and our new facility in Sycamore, Illinois,” says Ray
Minzner, president of Tate & Lyle Custom Ingredients (formerly chief
executive officer of CCI).
Tom Doxsie, senior vice president of food ingredients
for Tate & Lyle, Food & Industrial Ingredients, Americas, says the
union represents a further step toward broadening Tate & Lyle’s
product mix, technology, service offering and customer base, “and
fits with our strategy of growth through value-added ingredients and
customer focus. The addition of CCI to Tate & Lyle vertically
integrates us closer to our shared customer base and to the dairy industry.
The combination of our research and development expertise and broad
ingredient portfolio, coupled with CCI’s intimate dairy knowledge,
speed and agility to market, provides a solid foundation for
growth.”
The joining of the two companies allows them to
leverage key synergies to their mutual advantage. CCI — founded in
1975 as Continental Colloids — specialized in hydrocolloids and
expanded into emulsifiers and custom ingredient systems, while Tate &
Lyle is a leading manufacturer of value-added ingredients that’s
perhaps best known as the sole maker of the popular ingredient Splenda®
sucralose.
“The two companies enjoy a great strategic and
geographic fit; vertically integrating means that combined we have better
reach to our customers and an improved product mix,” Doxie says.
“CCI enjoys a great reputation as an innovator and expert in dairy
foods and dairy beverage applications. They are a customer-centric
operation with a technically advanced sales team. Their ability to
turn-around new product innovations at high speed is a great benefit that
is already enabling Tate & Lyle to bring food and beverage solutions to
market even faster. We are also benefiting from merging our distribution
networks. Additionally, CCI has an established sourcing network which is
enabling us to develop ingredient systems with a broad range of functional
food ingredients.”
What does this mean for the dairy industry? In short,
customers will see a greater level of new product offerings and services,
and Tate & Lyle Custom Ingredients will be able to deliver a wider
range of ingredient solutions to the dairy industry in a fast, flexible
manner.
“Historically we shared many of the same
customers,” Doxie explains. “But while Tate & Lyle’s
customer base is broad, spanning many different industries, CCI’s
prior customer base was more focused in dairy foods and dairy beverages and
their penetration is those industries was far greater than ours.
“The acquisition means that Tate &
Lyle’s existing customers gain new expertise in the areas of dairy
stabilizers, hydrocolloids systems, emulsifiers, vitamins and flavors.
CCI’s customers gain access to a far great range of ingredients
including sweeteners (nutritive and non-nutritive including Splenda),
starches and accidulants.”
By bringing together Tate & Lyle’s broad
product portfolio, global brand, diverse customer base and research
expertise with CCI’s strong research and technical service and
operational speed and agility, the aim is to bring increased choice and
advance growth in delivering value-added solutions to not only the dairy
market but to customers in all categories from beverage to baking.?
Tate & Lyle Custom Ingredients profiled two of its
Rebalance ingredient solutions for dairy drinks at the recent IFT show.
Dairy Drink Rebalance chocolate milk contains fewer calories than a
traditional full-fat, full-sugar chocolate milk; one solution, a natural
sweetening system containing sucrose and Krystar® Crystalline
Fructose, delivers 25 percent less added sugar and 12 percent less total
sugar compared to a traditional product. The second solution, containing
Splenda, delivers 50 percent less added sugar and 25 percent less total
sugar.
Tate & Lyle Custom Ingredients says Rebalance
solution systems will allow dairy beverage manufactures to create
great-tasting, lighter products for all consumer age groups. These solution
systems also make it simple for processors to meet the changing
requirements for the school lunch program.
Based in Sycamore, Ill., Tate & Lyle Custom
Ingredients operates state-of-the-art analytical and pilot labs in a
facility opened in January 2005 after CCI moved from its longtime home in
West Chicago (the company also has facilities in Canada and Mexico).
“The Sycamore research group has quickly been
integrated into the global Tate & Lyle R&D community via
collaboration on global projects such as the Enrich service
(developed by Tate & Lyle) and application studies on Tate & Lyle
proprietary ingredients,” explains Bill Shazer, Tate & Lyle
Custom Ingredients director of dairy application laboratories.
“Scientists routinely collaborate daily either via telephone, e-mail
or on-site laboratory and pilot-plant activities, as well as at meetings
and training both in Sycamore and Decatur [Illinois, Tate &
Lyle’s U.S. headquarters and home of its global R&D
center].”
Global conferences, ongoing communications and
cross-training of technical service and applications personnel is providing
the company’s global R&D team with a broader understanding of
ingredient strategies and is allowing Tate & Lyle to serve
customers’ technical needs more effectively and with increasingly
rapid turnaround. “We envision the Sycamore labs as the center for
Tate & Lyle dairy applications research for North America and are
dedicated to serving the dairy industry as part of Tate & Lyle,”
Shazer says.
The facilities are fully equipped with a modern dairy
pilot plant, which includes direct and indirect UHT capabilities as well as
a versatile HTST processing system. Cultured products including yogurt,
sour cream and cottage cheese are manufactured, and a production model
continuous ice cream freezer and frozen novelty equipment are routinely
used to test ingredients and ingredient blends. “The laboratory is
fully staffed with R&D scientists,” Shazer says, “and we
also leverage resources in Decatur and work with the wider ingredients team
there to develop their basic understanding of ingredient functionalities in
dairy products in order for the Decatur team to support dairy product
applications.”
For more photos of Tate & Lyle Custom Ingredients,
visit www.dairyfield.com
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