Made from luo han fruit grown in China, PureLo is a natural, zero-calorie sweetener.
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The Business Herald looks at six companies weathering the storm.
There's nothing like a little sugar to keep up company morale. For Hamilton product development company BioVittoria, it's a sweetener that's keeping them in the black.
PureLo, BioVittoria's brand product, is a naturally grown, safe, zero-calorie sweetener made from
the melon-like luo han fruit grown only in Southern China. It is a major breakthrough in the search for a natural alternative to sugar and already has a foothold in the colossal United States food industry.
"It addresses one of the most pressing nutritional issues of the Western world - calorie reduction," says David Thorrold, BioVittoria's chief executive.
"There are very few solutions out there that are natural and healthy. We're fortunate to have a product that's unique, that addresses a pressing need, and there's a large demand for it. If you have that momentum, you're better able to weather the storm of economic difficulties."
BioVittoria was founded five years ago when horticulturist Dr Garth Smith retired from HortResearch and teamed up with American Stephen LeFebvre, a marketing veteran of the nutraceutical industry. Together they searched for candidates - natural products that were proven bioactives.
Smith got a call from an old associate, Dr Lan Fusheng in China, who was working with the natural sweetening properties of luo han. It was just the candidate they were looking for.
BioVittoria then set up a joint venture with Guilin Bio-GFS in China, which today develops the plant science and farmer network, and runs the factory processing the fruit. Around 6000 orchardists in the mountainous Guanxi region grow the big-seeded luo han for the company.
In Hamilton's Waikato Innovation Park, BioVittoria looks after regulation approval, patent licences and handles sales, marketing and branding. The company now has control of the entire process from breeding new plants to selling PureLo to companies.
"The venture capital was raised in New Zealand, the New Zealand Government supports it through NZTE and it has continued to be supported by New Zealand investors who believe in this opportunity, Thorrold says. It has backing from science and technology venture capital specialists Endeavour Capital, and Stephen Tindall's K1W1 is a shareholder.
"If we had set up in China, we would have lost the Western understanding of a Western problem - obesity, diabetes and consumers rejecting artificial sweeteners."
PureLo, which is 200 times sweeter than sugar, leaves Chinese shores bound for the US, Korea, Japan and most recently Europe. The company is about to start on the New Zealand and Australia food safety regulation process, so it can be marketed here.
"We supply some very large companies in the US to be primarily used in cereals, drinks and as a tabletop sweetener. In future we see it being used in dairy, like yoghurt and flavoured milk," says Thorrold.
Awarded "Dragon Head" status from the Chinese Government last year as a flagship company of the industry, the company has 110 employees, most of them in China, and is about to recruit staff in the United States. The number of contracted farmers has doubled each year for the past three years.
"We're building a sustainable supply chain to meet the needs of our customers, and we continue to increase turnover because of the demand for this kind of product," says Thorrold. The next project is to build consumer awareness so they know what to look for on supermarket shelves.
