Cargill and Japanese company Mitsui have formed 'agency agreements' to distribute the Cargill manufactured erythritol to food company customers in Japan.
Erythritol, a 70 per cent sugar-derived alcohol with a calorie count of 0.2 per gramme, is currently manufactured by Cargill Food & Pharma Specialties.
Under terms of the agreement, the low-cal sweetener will be imported into Japan by Cerestar, the French starch and starch-derivative group recently bought by Cargill.
"We'll do the manufacturing and Mitsui-owned Nikken Fine Chemicals (NFC) will be our sales agents and manage the logistics," Bill Brady, public affairs at Cargill told FoodNavigator.com.
Used as a sweetener in beverage, confectionery and bakery applications, erythritol is produced via an all-natural fermentation process at Cargill's Blair plant in the US.
In 1997 Cargill broke ground for the $60 million plant at a time when it had a joint venture agreement with Japanese company Mitsubishi, but the market never developed sufficiently to full scale manufacturing.
"In June 2002 we bought back Mitsubishi Chemical's part of the agreement," said Brady.
Now fully operational, the plant is ready to answer a demand for the product, rising steadily as food manufacturers seek to offer low-calorie alternatives to the increasingly health conscious consumer.
Erythritol occurs naturally in alcoholic beverages, soy sauce, some fruits, and is also found in small amounts in human plasma.
It is 60-80 per cent sweeter than sucrose and is produced from corn or wheat starch by enzymatic hydrolysis yielding glucose, which is fermented by osmophilic yeast. Once erythritol is separated from the fermentation broth, it is purified to a crystalline product that is more than 99 per cent pure.