Tate & Lyle and BioHarvest Sciences have confirmed that BioHarvest's Botanical Synthesis platform can produce the targeted sweetening solution at the heart of their plant-based sweetener collaboration, a milestone the two companies say keeps development on schedule.

The partnership, announced in late 2024, aims to develop next-generation plant-based sweeteners for sugar-reduced and sugar-free food and beverage products. The companies expanded its scope earlier this year to cover multiple plant-based sweetener molecules, moving the programme beyond a single target compound.

For Tate & Lyle, a major ingredients supplier to global food and beverage manufacturers, the collaboration addresses sustained manufacturer demand for sustainable, plant-derived sweeteners that preserve taste in products reformulated to cut sugar. For BioHarvest, the validation strengthens the commercial case for its plant cell cultivation technology beyond its existing pipeline.

What does the milestone change?

The confirmation proves the technical feasibility of producing the targeted sweetening solution through BioHarvest's Botanical Synthesis platform, which grows botanical compounds through plant cell cultivation rather than traditional agricultural extraction. The companies report that development activities continue to advance in line with expectations following the scope expansion agreed earlier this year.

The platform carries three operational implications for ingredient supply chains, according to the companies:

• Reduced reliance on traditional agricultural extraction for botanicals, supporting sustainability targets across the food and beverage industry.
• Improved consistency and supply reliability compared with crop-dependent sourcing.
• Lower time, labour and natural resource requirements for producing certain ingredients.

Those claims matter to manufacturers weighing reformulation costs. Agricultural extraction of high-intensity botanical sweeteners is exposed to harvest variability, land use and processing intensity. A cultivation-based production route, if scaled, offers a route to steadier volumes and more predictable specification control.

Why a broader toolbox matters

Susanna Palatucci, vice president of commercial innovation and strategy at Tate & Lyle, framed the milestone in portfolio terms.

"Different food and beverage categories demand different balances of taste, nutrition, cost and labelling, which is why building a broader toolbox of solutions matters," Palatucci said.

"This milestone further bolsters the potential of BioHarvest's Botanical Synthesis platform and the role new approaches to ingredient development could play in helping us meet those varied customer needs across our portfolio," she added.

The expansion to multiple sweetener molecules signals that Tate & Lyle intends the collaboration to feed a range of applications rather than a single ingredient launch. Sugar-reduced and sugar-free product development varies sharply by category: beverages, dairy, bakery and confectionery each impose distinct taste, cost and clean-label constraints that a single sweetener molecule cannot cover alone.

What happens next?

Development work continues under the expanded scope agreed earlier this year. The companies have not disclosed commercialisation dates, production volumes or pricing, so the next visible steps will be further technical milestones as the platform moves from validated production of the targeted solution toward scalable ingredient supply for Tate & Lyle's customer base.