History

Our his­to­ry starts a few years before the com­pa­ny was for­mal­ly found­ed. Our founder, Lucy Dahlgren, was work­ing as a project manager.

Professor Yan Li, Lucy’s father, the dean at the insti­tu­tion for food sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy at the Jinan University in China. He was not keen on the idea, he thought that the already hun­dreds of ste­via refiner­ies in China were suf­fi­cient. He meant that the break­through of ste­via as a sweet­en­er was not about the pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty but more a ques­tion of inno­va­tion and the devel­op­ment of prod­ucts with ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides. An opin­ion shared by pro­fes­sor Jan Geuns at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium

Lucy Dahlgren was won over by the pro­fes­sors Yan Li and Jan Geuns. With the sup­port of the Chinese min­istry of agri­cul­ture and China’s cham­ber of com­merce, and after first dis­cus­sions with some of the lead­ing chi­nese ste­via grow­ers and refiner­ies, she found­ed Bayn Solutions AB in 2009, togeth­er with Lennart Holmström who has a back­ground as a CEO in the con­struc­tion sector.

2009-2011

Bayn Solutions was found­ed in order to offer the European food and bev­er­age indus­try both prod­ucts and knowl­edge to reduce sug­ar. The main ingre­di­ent was ste­vi­ol glycosides.

However, in 2009 ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides were not yet approved in the EU.

During the first years Bayn was an active mem­ber in Eustas, the European ste­via organ­i­sa­tion, work­ing to approve ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides as an ingre­di­ent in food. Already in 2007 Eustas had sub­mit­ted an appli­ca­tion to the European author­i­ty for food safe­ty; EFSA. The appli­ca­tion was based on Professor Jan Geuns’ data­base of more than 20 years of research about stevia.

Meanwhile we wait­ed took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to secure con­tracts with grow­ers and refiner­ies in China. This way Bayn was well pre­pared when EFSA in the end of 2011 final­ly approved ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides as a sweet­en­ing sub­stance. Soon there­after we signed a dis­tri­b­u­tion agree­ment with Barentz International - one of the world’s lead­ing dis­trib­u­tors to the food and bev­er­age indus­try. This was the first proof that we were on the right track.

We also made sure to reg­is­ter our trade­mark EUREBA®. The name is a play on words. EU is of course the European Union, REBA is an abbre­vi­a­tion of Rebaudioside A, the most often used ste­vi­ol gly­co­side. But as often when abbre­vi­a­tions are used as a name, it should not be tak­en lit­er­al­ly. Eureba is so much more than just ste­vi­ol glycosides.

2012-2014

If the first years was all about wait­ing for the right moment, the fol­low­ing three years was break­ing ground and sow­ing seeds in a fresh mar­ket. We deliv­ered ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides in small vol­umes to buy­ers who want­ed to try it. We helped our cus­tomers to devel­op recipes with the desired taste pro­file and tex­ture. And we devel­oped gener­ic recipes for a num­ber of appli­ca­tion areas. Our prod­ucts, sold under the name Eureba, were well received:

Bayn was ranked as one of our top three sup­pli­ers in terms of their prod­uct qual­i­ty, price and their ser­vices – Heinz Company (amerikan­skt livsmedelsföretag)

We have test­ed more than 20 com­pet­i­tive prod­ucts, Eureba was by far the best Mulder (müs­liföre­tag i Belgien)

Eureba has the purest taste so that we do not need any mask­ing agent, thus we reduced the costs Zbyszko (dryck­esföre­tag i Polen)

We have test­ed more than 100 dif­fer­ent deliv­er­ies of ste­via, the result shown that Bayn’s prod­uct Eureba has the best qual­i­ty Professor Jan Geuns

And to top it off, we signed anoth­er agree­ment with yet anoth­er large dis­trib­u­tor in the food and bev­er­age indus­try: R2 Group (now a part of Caldic).

On the back of this over­whelm­ing pos­i­tive response we decid­ed to grow. For that ven­ture cap­i­tal was need­ed. This is why we list­ed our share on Nasdaq First North, now Nasdaq First North Growth Market.

2015-2017

During the fol­low­ing three years (2015-2017) we built the main part of the organ­i­sa­tion we have today. From three employ­ees we grew to eight, cre­at­ed an inno­va­tion cen­tre in Gävle (Bayn Studio) and start­ed a reor­gan­i­sa­tion; from a research dri­ven com­pa­ny to a mar­ket dri­ven one.

We refined the brand EUREBA®. Today it stands for total solu­tions that replace sug­ar 1:1. These are aimed at all food and bev­er­age com­pa­nies, from the small to the medi­um sized, to the large, who want to reduce sug­ar with a sim­ple solu­tion and with­out hav­ing to run an advanced prod­uct devel­op­ment inhouse.

And we reg­is­tered NAVIA®. It is our brand for func­tion­al ingre­di­ents from nat­ur­al sources, that add e.g. sweet­ness and aro­ma. The prod­ucts are aimed at large food and bev­er­age com­pa­nies with their own capac­i­ty for prod­uct devel­op­ment, but who wish to buy raw mate­r­i­al and ingre­di­ents of high qual­i­ty at an advan­ta­geous price.

2018–

In 2018, after nine years of hard work, we were ready to step it up even fur­ther. Patrik Edström took over the role of CEO after the founder Lucy Dahlgren who now took a seat on the Board of Directors. At the same time Gunnar Ek, the leg­endary fig­ure­head of Aktiespararna, the Swedish Shareholders’ Association, also joined the Board. We start­ed work on get­ting ISO cer­ti­fied. The cer­ti­fi­ca­tion means that we will con­tin­u­al­ly improve and adjust the busi­ness to meet our cus­tomers’ expec­ta­tions. And a thor­ough mar­ket and sales activ­i­ty was put in place under the man­age­ment of Mats Källqvist.

And our sto­ry continues...