Ingredion Inc. is an American food and beverage ingredient provider based in Westchester, Illinois,[3] producing mainly starches, non-GMO sweeteners, stevia, and pea protein.[4] The company turns corn, tapioca, potatoes, plant-based stevia, grains, fruits, gums and other vegetables into ingredients for the food, beverage, brewing, and pharmaceutical industries and numerous industrial sectors.[5] It has about 12,000 employees in 44 locations,[6] and customers in excess of 120 countries.[7]
In 2021, Ingredion was ranked second in the Modified Starch category of the Global Food Thickener Companies list and second on the Top 50 Global Sweetener Companies list by FoodTalks.[8][9]
History
Logo as CPC International (1997)
The company, which began as Corn Products Refining Co. and later as "CPC International," was founded by the merger of leading US corn refiners in 1906.[10] The company was incorporated in New Jersey.[11] The company began producing Argo laundry cornstarch in 1908 and began selling Mazola corn oil in 1911.[12]
In 1919 Corn Products acquired Canada Starch Company (now known as Casco). During the 1920s, the company received a patent for crystalline dextrose, sold as Cerelose, opened refining operations in South America and Mexico, and began selling chocolate-flavored malt syrup Bosco. In the 1930s, Corn Products expanded operations to Asia and further in South America. It also began selling waffle syrup under the Karo name for the first time.[10]
In 1958, Corn Products Refining Company merged with The Best Foods, Inc., becoming Corn Products Company. During the 1960s, the company expanded into Chile, Pakistan and Malaysia, and began producing high-fructose corn syrup at the Argo plant. and in 1969 it changed its name to CPC International Inc.[10]
In the 1970s, CPC expanded into Africa and further into South America, while in 1981 the company constructed three North American plants in Stockton, California; Winston-Salem, North Carolina; and Port Colborne, Ontario.[10]
In 1984, Canada Starch Company merged with an Ontario corn refiner to become Casco. In 1987, the company sold its starch factories in Europe for $600 million to the Italian French sugar manufacture Eridania Béghin-Say owned by Ferruzzi and renamed Cerestar.[10][15] Cerestar was sold in 2002 to Cargill for $1.14 billion having a turnover of $1.56 billion in 2000.[16]
The Bestfoods division of the company known for brands Maizena, Knorr, Hellmann's / Best Foods mayonnaise and Skippy Peanut Butter existed as a division from 1958 until 1997 when CPC International renamed itself Bestfoods, focusing on packaged food products, and spun-off the corn-refining business into Corn Products International.[17]
In October 2010, CPI acquired National Starch from Dutch paints firm AkzoNobel for $1.3 billion in cash.[18] It also took on pension and employee benefit liabilities.[19][20]
In 2012, the company was added to the Fortune 500 list[21][22] and was renamed Ingredion.[23] In 2014, Ingredion opened 14 Idea Labs, a global network of innovation centers where scientists work directly with customers.[24] As of 2021, there were over 500 scientists working at 32 Idea Labs worldwide.[citation needed]
In 2015 they acquired Penford Corp for $340 million [25] and then Kerr Concentrates for $100 million.[26] Penford produced mainly potato starch derivatives and had a turn-over of $467 million. In 2014 it had 445 employees in six plants. Kerr Concentrates makes fruit and vegetables concentrates and purees and had a turnover of $75 million and 82 employees.[27] In 2016 the company acquired Shandong Huanong Specialty Corn Development Co, a corn starch manufacturing plant in China.[28] Then in 2017, it acquired TIC Gums as well as Sun Flour Industry Co, a Thai rice starch and flour company.[25] In 2018 Ingredion began a joint venture with Verdient Foods to increase its investment in plant-based proteins and pulse-based flours.[29] (In 2020, Ingredion fully acquired Verdient.)[30] Also in 2018, Ingredion began manufacturing and producing sugar alternative Astraea Allulose in Latin America.[31] In 2019, Ingredion led the series B venture capital raising for The EVERY Company, a company developing an animal(chicken)-free egg white protein based on fermentation.[32] They also acquired Western Polymer, a US potato starch manufacturer that produces cationic starch for the paper industry. Western Polymer employed about 70 people at 3 sites.[33][34]
Ingredion acquired PureCircle in 2020, a stevia sweeteners maker.[35][36] That year they also began marketing Canadian company NorQuin's quinoa products.[37] Ingredion also invested $200 million into plant-based meat substitutes.[38] Then in 2021, Ingredion acquired Katech, a German manufacturer of texture and stabilization solutions.[39] The company also began joint ventures with Grupo Arcor, providing food and beverage ingredients to customers in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay,[40] and Amyris, a Brazil-based manufacturer of fermentation-derived Reb M sweetener.[41] Ingredion also opened a new plant protein facility in South Sioux City, Nebraska, becoming the first supplier to manufacture plant protein isolate, concentrate, flour and starch products in North America.[42] In 2022, Ingredion acquired a stake in InnovoPro, an Israeli developer of protein concentrate extracted from chickpeas.[43]
Management
James Zallie has served as president and CEO since 2018 and as a member of the Board of Directors since 2017. He joined the company in 2010 when it acquired National Starch, where he was President in CEO.[44] Previously with Ingredion, he was the executive vice president of global specialties and president of the Americas region.[45] Zallie replaced Ilene S. Gordon who retired after being President and CEO from 2009 and 2017.[44] The company employs approximately 12,000 people in North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific[7] and operates 44 manufacturing facilities in 14 countries.
Products
Ingredion’s products include sweeteners, starches, nutrition ingredients, and biomaterial solutions.[46] Sweetener products include glucose syrup, high maltose syrups, high fructose corn syrup, caramel color, dextrose, polyols, maltodextrins, and glucose and syrup solids.[47] Since its acquisition of PureCircle, Ingredion also produces plant-based stevia sweeteners and flavors for the food and beverage industry.[36] The company’s pea protein isolate is used with protein-fortified products for sports nutrition, bakery, snacks, alternative dairy and alternative meats.[42]
Recognition
The company was named the "World's Most Ethical Company" in 2014 by the Ethisphere Institute.[48] In 2022, Ingredion was named to Fortune's "World's Most Admired Companies" list, ranking 2nd in the Food Production industry category.[49] It was the company’s 13th consecutive year making the list.[50] Also in 2022, Ingredion was included on Bloomberg's "Gender-Equality Index" for the 5th consecutive year,[51] and earned a 95/100 on the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index.[52]
Starch or amylum is a polymeric carbohydrate consisting of numerous glucose units joined by glycosidic bonds. This polysaccharide is produced by most green plants for energy storage. Worldwide, it is the most common carbohydrate in human diets, and is contained in large amounts in staple foods such as wheat, potatoes, maize (corn), rice, and cassava (manioc).
Stevia is a sweet sugar substitute that is about 50 to 300 times sweeter than sugar. It is extracted from the leaves of Stevia rebaudiana, a plant native to areas of Paraguay and Brazil in the southern Amazon rainforest. The active compounds in stevia are steviol glycosides. Stevia is heat-stable, pH-stable, and not fermentable. Humans cannot metabolize the glycosides in stevia, and therefore it has zero calories. Its taste has a slower onset and longer duration than that of sugar, and at high concentrations some of its extracts may have an aftertaste described as licorice-like or bitter. Stevia is used in sugar- and calorie-reduced food and beverage products as an alternative for variants with sugar.
Corn syrup is a food syrup which is made from the starch of corn/maize and contains varying amounts of sugars: glucose, maltose and higher oligosaccharides, depending on the grade. Corn syrup is used in foods to soften texture, add volume, prevent crystallization of sugar, and enhance flavor. It can be processed into high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) by using the enzyme D-xylose isomerase to convert a large proportion of its glucose into sweeter fructose.
Marshmallow is a confectionery made from sugar, water and gelatin whipped to a solid-but-soft consistency. It is used as a filling in baking or molded into shapes and coated with corn starch. This sugar confection is inspired by a medicinal confection made from Althaea officinalis, the marsh-mallow plant.
In cooking, syrup is a condiment that is a thick, viscous liquid consisting primarily of a solution of sugar in water, containing a large amount of dissolved sugars but showing little tendency to deposit crystals. In its concentrated form, its consistency is similar to that of molasses. The viscosity arises from the multiple hydrogen bonds between the dissolved sugar, which has many hydroxyl (OH) groups.
Cheez Whiz is a brand of processed cheese sauce or spread produced by Kraft Foods. It was developed by a team led by food scientist Edwin Traisman (1915–2007). It was first sold in 1952, and with some changes in formulation continues to be in production today.
Tate & Lyle PLC is a British-headquartered, global supplier of food and beverage products to food and industrial markets. It was originally a sugar refining business, but from the 1970s, it began to diversify, eventually divesting its sugar business in 2010. It specialises in turning raw materials such as corn and tapioca into ingredients that add taste, texture, and nutrients to food and beverages. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
Breyers is a brand of ice cream started in 1866 by William A. Breyer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Hellmann's and Best Foods are American brand names that are used for the same line of mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, sauce, salad dressing, condiments and other food products. They have been owned by the British multinational company Unilever since 2000. The Hellmann's brand is sold in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains; Latin America; Europe; Australia; the Middle East; Canada; India; and Pakistan. The Best Foods brand is sold in the United States west of the Rocky Mountains; in East Asia; Southeast Asia; Australia, and New Zealand.
Brown rice (malt) syrup, also known as rice syrup or rice malt, is a sweetener which is rich in compounds categorized as sugars and is derived by steeping cooked rice starch with saccharifying enzymes to break down the starches, followed by straining off the liquid and reducing it by evaporative heating until the desired consistency is reached. The enzymes used in the saccharification step are supplied by an addition of sprouted barley grains to the rice starch or by adding bacterial- or fungal-derived purified enzyme isolates.
High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), also known as glucose–fructose, isoglucose and glucose–fructose syrup, is a sweetener made from corn starch. As in the production of conventional corn syrup, the starch is broken down into glucose by enzymes. To make HFCS, the corn syrup is further processed by D-xylose isomerase to convert some of its glucose into fructose. HFCS was first marketed in the early 1970s by the Clinton Corn Processing Company, together with the Japanese Agency of Industrial Science and Technology, where the enzyme was discovered in 1965.
Glucose syrup, also known as confectioner's glucose, is a syrup made from the hydrolysis of starch. Glucose is a sugar. Maize (corn) is commonly used as the source of the starch in the US, in which case the syrup is called "corn syrup", but glucose syrup is also made from potatoes and wheat, and less often from barley, rice and cassava.p. 21
Primary Products Ingredients Americas LLC, also formerly known as Tate & Lyle Primary Products, is an American subsidiary of Tate & Lyle PLC that produces a range of starch products for the food, paper and other industries; high fructose corn syrup; crystalline fructose; and other agro-industrial products. The company was incorporated in 1906 as A. E. Staley Manufacturing Company by Augustus Eugene Staley.
Hydrogenated starch hydrolysates (HSHs), also known as polyglycitol syrup, are mixtures of several sugar alcohols. Hydrogenated starch hydrolysates were developed by the Swedish company Lyckeby Starch in the 1960s. The HSH family of polyols is an approved food ingredient in Canada, Japan, and Australia. HSH sweeteners provide 40 to 90% sweetness relative to table sugar.
Squirrel was a Canadian brand of peanut butter, marketed from about 1915 to about 2000.
The Corn Refiners Association (CRA) is a trade association based in Washington, D.C. It represents the corn refining industry in the United States. Corn refining encompasses the production of corn starch, corn oil, and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS).
PureCircle is a producer and innovator in the area of stevia sweeteners for the food and beverage industry. PureCircle has offices around the world, with the headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange until it was acquired by Ingredion in July 2020.
Roquette is a French-based family owned company which produces more than 650 by-products from the starch extracted from corn, wheat, potatoes and peas. Founded and headquartered in Lestrem, France in 1933 by the brothers Dominique and Germain Roquette, Roquette has grown to become the leader in starch production in Europe and the number four ranked producer of starch worldwide. It is also the leader in the production of Polyols worldwide. Roquette employs more than 8,360 people globally and achieved a turnover of over 2,5 billion euros in 2011.
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US$ 6.894 billion (2021)
