Farm-to-product: Value chain of stevia

Billy Bonka is a choco­late mak­er who is almost as colour­ful as his more famous friend Willy. It has come to his atten­tion that more and more con­sumers are demand­ing milk choco­late with­out added sug­ar. However, they want it to taste just as sweet and deli­cious as the choco­late factory’s leg­endary choco­late bar. After a lit­tle research, Mr Bonka has opened his eyes and found ste­via and is now curi­ous about how this sweet plant from a field in a coun­try far away finds its way into his chocolate.

Nursery garden

Stevia grows nat­u­ral­ly in Paraguay’s rain­forests. There, the sweet leaves have been used by the Guarani Indians as sweet­en­ers for more than 1500 years. But this is not where Mr Bonkas ste­via begins its journey.

Mr Bonkas ste­via begins its life on the oth­er side of the globe – in China, where ste­via is grown more than any­where else on earth. But rarely from seeds.

It is hard to make ste­via seeds grow. Only one in ten becomes a plant. Therefore, the jour­ney begins at a nurs­ery, where they take cut­tings and let them grow in greenhouses.

Cultivation

After ten to twelve weeks the cut­tings are plant­ed out. On the plant site, there should be a lot of sun and heat, and the air should be humid. But the ste­via plant does not want too much water. The spe­cif­ic require­ments mean that the plant is grown main­ly in sub­trop­i­cal climates.

After three to five months in humid air and well-drained soil, and with plen­ty of sun and heat, ste­via is ready to be har­vest­ed. If har­vest­ing is done care­ful­ly, the same plant can be har­vest­ed sev­er­al times over 2–3 years. But most com­mon­ly, the entire plant is har­vest­ed at once.

Acquisition, purification and drying

The har­vest­ed ste­via plants are pur­chased and shipped to a ‘mill’ where the leaves are sep­a­rat­ed from the branch, cleaned and sort­ed accord­ing to qual­i­ty. The leaves are then dried and packed.

The dried leaves are up to 30 times sweet­er than reg­u­lar sug­ar. Therefore, they are used as they are in tea, herbal tea or fruit infusion.

But Mr Bonka wants to use ste­via in his choco­late. But he can’t. However, he is allowed to use the sweet sub­stances that give the plant its sweet­ness – the so-called ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides. Therefore, we fol­low the ste­via leaves that con­tin­ue their jour­ney to a refinery.

Refining

Refinery is a word that brings to mind a jum­ble of pipes, large tanks and a high mast at the top where a torch seems to burn with eter­nal flame. A ste­via refin­ery is, how­ev­er, a bit dif­fer­ent. Stevia refiner­ies are more like sug­ar refineries.

In the first phase, a basic extract is extract­ed con­sist­ing of var­i­ous types of ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides. This is done in two steps. First, the leaves are placed in warm water to leach ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides. The sweet sub­stances are then fil­tered and extract­ed as crystals.

To ensure an even lev­el of, for exam­ple, Reb A, the ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides in the basic extract need to be divid­ed into frac­tions. This is done in a sec­ond step that starts with adding alco­hol to the extract. The solu­tion is dis­tilled so the ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides are crys­tal­lized in a con­trolled man­ner and frac­tions with var­i­ous ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides can be recov­ered. This is repeat­ed for each frac­tion to excrete ‘incor­rect’ ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides and there­by make the frac­tion ‘clean­er’. In this way, ste­via extract with 98 to 99 per­cent ‘puri­ty’ can be obtained.

Mixing and packing

The high­er puri­ty, the bet­ter, is easy to believe. But that’s not always the case. The coun­ter­in­tu­itive truth about ste­via extract is that it is often prefer­able with a ste­via extract with 50 to 80 per­cent Reb A, for exam­ple, and the rest con­tain­ing oth­er ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides (main­ly ste­vio­side and Reb C).

Therefore, puri­fied Reb A is mixed with more or less puri­fied frac­tions of oth­er ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides. Now we have a ste­via extract which is ready to be pack­aged and sold further.

Exporter or agent

After refin­ing and blend­ing, the ste­via extract ends up with an exporter or agent in the pro­duc­ing coun­try, in this case, China.

The Chinese exporter or agent sells the ste­via extract through var­i­ous agents or importers around the world.

Agent or importer on the European market

We are now get­ting to the end of the ste­via val­ue chain, but it will still take a while before the ste­via extract ends up with Billy Bonka at the choco­late factory.

The ste­via extract has now end­ed up with an importer in Europe. It does not end up in a phys­i­cal sense, since an agent mere­ly medi­ates the deal. The ste­via extract is then sold to var­i­ous dis­trib­u­tors around Europe.

Billy Bonka has a few options

Billy Bonka faces dif­fer­ent choices.

He can actu­al­ly choose to skip a few steps in the val­ue chain and buy direct­ly from a refin­ery in China. But that’s not to rec­om­mend. For a vari­ety of rea­sons, it can be tricky and Billy may not be get­ting what he wants.

Agent or importer?

It is eas­i­er to turn to an importer or agent in Europe.

The agent acts as a tra­di­tion­al bro­ker and has no stock of his own but medi­ates the deal between the exporter and Billy Bonka.

An importer buys from an exporter and has his own inven­to­ry. The importer is also like­ly to work close­ly with sup­pli­ers who are well-known and estab­lished. It can mean greater pre­dictabil­i­ty and secu­ri­ty for Billy Bonka.

However, Billy Bonka is cau­tious and wants to take one step at a time. In addi­tion, the choco­late fac­to­ry is not very huge with its 50 employ­ees. And ste­via is very potent;it does not take many grams to get a pleas­ant sweet­ness in Bonkas milk choco­late . There is a risk that the agent or importer does not think it is worth the trou­ble to sell as small quan­ti­ties as Mr Bonka wants.

Distributor

Then we have the distributor.

A dis­trib­u­tor han­dles many dif­fer­ent types of ingre­di­ents for dif­fer­ent types of food. This means that it can be dif­fi­cult to find a dis­trib­u­tor who is an expert on Billy Bonka’s choco­late or under­stands his challenges.

A Helping Hand

Do you find your­self in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion as Billy Bonka? We are ready to help you with your sug­ar reduc­tion. You can buy ste­via extract direct­ly from us or get tips on good dis­trib­u­tors that we work with. Do not hes­i­tate to con­tact us.