Jessica Wilford serves as vice president, head of category development and planning for Tate & Lyle in North America. She was formerly a strategy consultant with 10 years’ experience at a top-tier consultancy before moving to an in-house role, driving strategy and execution at Tate & Lyle. She is based in Toronto, Canada.
 
Tate & Lyle’s stated purpose is to help people worldwide make healthier and tastier food and drink choices, while also supporting communities and caring for the planet. The company works with customers to achieve this purpose by utilizing low and no-calorie sweeteners to reduce sugar intake, incorporating gut-friendly fibers for health benefits, employing texturants to create indulgent desserts, and stabilizing foods for long-lasting deliciousness.
  
Health E-Insights (HEI): Tate & Lyle is first and foremost about science. What is your technical background?
 
Wilford: My background is business, but a key part of my role is collaborating with the incredible Tate & Lyle technicians and scientists. We identify key consumer trends, and the scientists develop the ingredient ideas. Together we bring those ideas to market. What I love about our company and culture is that we are science first, unapologetically. I feel very comfortable in this environment. My parents are both scientists. So, there’s an irony to that fact. I went into business and wound up working with scientists.
 
HEI: The company has been in existence for a long time. How has Tate & Lyle changed to keep pace, especially in recent years?
 
Wilford: Indeed, Tate & Lyle has a long legacy, that being 160 years in business. People know us for our British roots, but our American operations were cemented by the A.E. Staley company, which also was more than 100 years old. And here’s a fun fact. The Chicago Bears professional football team originated as the Decatur Staleys in the early 1920s. That’s how prominent the family was.
 
We have a huge legacy on both sides of the ocean. And, like any legacy company that seeks to continue innovating, we have shifted strategy a lot, especially in the last few years. We sold our sugar business in 2010, ending our long association with refined sugar production. Since then, we’ve been on a path to becoming a specialty ingredients company, focusing primarily on specialty sweeteners, starches, and fibers, while also expanding our international presence.
 
We have acquired companies in recent years to help expand our reach and portfolio. Most recently, we acquired Nutriati, a supplier of chickpea products in North America. Another recent acquisition is Sweet Green Fields, a leading stevia solutions provider, and Chaodee Modified Starch (CMS) Co., Ltd., a well-established tapioca modified food starch manufacturer based in Thailand. Collectively, this helps position Tate & Lyle as a global food and beverage ingredients solution, which is our goal.
 
HEI: I understand you have gone through a global brand refresh. What has that involved?
 
Wilford: Like our recent strategic shifts and acquisitions, the Tate & Lyle rebrand is the most visible milestone in our transformation to becoming a purpose-led, growth-focused, specialty food and beverage solutions business. Our commitment to Science, Solutions, Society is a key part of our brand refresh and was borne out of a deep understanding of our purpose: Transforming Lives Through the Science of Food. It’s much more reflective of who we are as a company and our forward vision, even though we are proud of our past legacy.
 
As the design work was evolving, we discovered very early on the incredible power of emphasizing the “and,” an ampersand in our name. It communicates how Tate & Lyle brings more to the table. We are truly partners with our customers. Science is our core, solutions are how we partner with customers, and society is about our commitment to our communities, our people, and the planet.
 
HEI: Tate & Lyle refers a lot to offering solutions. Don’t you agree solutions is an overused industry word?
 
Wilford: Maybe. That word can mean a lot of different things, which is why it’s used a lot in business speak. But for us, whatever word we use, it’s about us partnering with our customers to solve their formulation challenges by finding ingredient-based solutions for them. Usually, that solution involves us helping make tasty food healthy or making healthy food tasty. 
 
A solution can be a single ingredient. It can be a combination of ingredients. It can be a pre-made blend. Whatever it is we’re working on, it’s about collaboration and problem solving with our customers.
 
HEI: Taste and texture are two key elements toward developing consumer acceptance of any products. How do you accomplish that goal for your customers?
 
Wilford: First of all, taste and texture are two very important components of consumer acceptance. Texture plays a hugely important functional role in any product, from thickening, to mouthfeel, to gelling and emulsification. We tend to think of taste first, but texture plays a key role in the consumer experience. The mouthfeel, the visual, the tactile experience all play a role in the taste and the perception of that taste. 
 
We have more than 250 specialty starches in our portfolio including corn-, tapioca-, and chickpea-based. We have so many to choose from, but it’s all about how you use them in a specific application. It goes back to the solution. We have been investing a lot of time and resources into building a sensory team, nutrition team, and consumer research teams, all to help us crack the code for each customer based on the balance of taste and texture, as well as manufacturing conditions.
 
HEI: You’ve jumped on the gummy bandwagon with an eye on texture and taste. How are your gummies different?
 
Wilford: I prefer to say we have led the bandwagon. We have worked on gummy formulations for the past two years. We introduced those formulations in 2022 at SupplySide West but have been partnering with customers on this topic for longer still. 
 
We started to see the rise of the gummy format a few years ago, and we saw how much sugar was being used in many gummy formulations. Sometimes, sugar was 70% of a gummy. That may not be bad if you take one gummy, but many take four to five a day.
 
We don’t make gummies as a consumer product. Our food scientists are always working on formulations to solve application challenges that we know to exist, in this case the amount of sugar being used to support many gummy formulations. We develop prototypes that we bring to customers as examples to be further tweaked to meet their specific needs.
 
Manufacturers often rely on sugar in gummies for taste and viscosity. Tate & Lyle on the other hand, is passionate about taking sugar out of foods. We’ve removed 6 million tons of sugar from diets thanks to our products. With that in mind, our formula removes the sugar, but keeps the great taste as well as the overall sensory experience.
 
In our consumer research we observed people love to pick up a gummy container and shake it, but most sugar-free gummies stick together. Ours don’t, and they also have a nice clean bite, so we’re also giving consumers that great tactile experience they love. 
 
HEI: A new energy bar concept was recently introduced. What makes it different?
 
Wilford: Healthy indulgence. At SupplySide West 2023, we showcased an energy bar concept that was sugar-free and added fiber for physical health and caffeine for mental stimulation. Both are important to consumers. It all comes back to what people want—and that is delicious and indulgent food. Obviously, they don’t want a protein bar that tastes bad. We wanted to showcase the art of the possible of both an innovative and indulgent and nutritious product.
 
HEI: Any industry trends that Tate & Lyle has needed to address in its manufacturing process?
 
Wilford: The biggest and most challenging trend is sustainably. The food industry is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. We take our role in that seriously, and we have science-backed targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
 
We’ve eliminated all coal-based energy use in our manufacturing. We recently had our first site go 100% renewable and 92% of our waste is beneficially used. By lowering the footprint of our production practices, we’re also helping our customers achieve their sustainability metrics.
 
We’re also leaning heavily into making stevia production more sustainable. We’ve recently expanded our sustainable stevia program with Earthwatch supporting stevia farmers across China to decrease environmental impacts. This includes helping them use more sustainable crop nutrients, improving soil health monitoring, and more hands-on support.
 
HEI: What is the biggest challenge facing the company today?
 
Wilford: The rapid speed of change. The great thing about food is that it’s so central to our day-to-day lives. It’s important to all people every day. But that also means consumers want a lot from their food. They are always thinking and talking about it, as well as researching it. Trends and consumer curiosities are always shifting. 
 
With that in mind, it’s challenging to keep pace. But because we are rooted in science and we are led by purpose, I truly cannot think of a company that’s better equipped to meet that challenge.
 
HEI: Let’s end on a personal note. What are you passionate about?
 
Wilford: It’s obviously food. I will admit I’m an eater and enjoyer of food, but not a chef. Now that I have two kids, ages four and two, I think about food even more and what it does to your body, your mood, and your energy.