Dive Brief:
- Heartland Food Products Group announced it is acquiring the Splenda brand from McNeil Nutritionals, LLC, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc. The companies did not disclose financial terms of the deal.
- Splenda, which contains the no-calorie sweetener sucralose, fits into Heartland's current portfolio, as it is a global leader in producing and marketing low-calorie sweeteners, drink mixes, coffee, and nutritional beverages, according to Heartland.
- "Tate & Lyle PLC, which helped discover sucralose in the 1970s, will retain the rights to use the Splenda brand name when sucralose it manufactures is used as an ingredient in food and drink products, according to people familiar with the brand," The Wall Street Journal reported.
Dive Insight:
Artificial sweeteners, such as sucralose and the recently developed allulose, also from Tate & Lyle, have been in focus as consumers start limiting their daily sugar intake amid the country's obesity epidemic. This has already significantly impacted some food and beverage segments, such as soda.
But artificial sweeteners come with their own set of hurdles. Aspartame in particular has seen its fair share of criticism, though experts like the American Cancer Society have come out in defense of the sweetener. In April, PepsiCo decided to relaunch Diet Pepsi with a mix of sucralose and acesulfame potassium in place of aspartame in the U.S.
One segment that artificial sweeteners has not been able to help has been diet soda, which has seen a steady decline in sales for the past few years. Coca-Cola's Diet Coke saw a 7% drop in volume last quarter following a 6% decrease in volume the quarter before.