Stevia Monk Fruit Sustainable Production | GLG Life Tech

Sustainable Supply Chain for Stevia and Monk Fruit

GLG has developed a sustainable vertically integrated supply chain for both stevia and monk fruit, and continues to strive for constant innovation across each element of the supply chain.

GLG is proud to hold multiple patents in agriculture & processing, and is the world’s largest processing capacity for stevia and monk fruit natural sweeteners.

VERTICAL INTEGRATION

FOOD & QUALITY ASSURANCE

Is assured at every level of agriculture, processing & purification

1. Agriculture

Patented Seeds:

  • Low cost/scalable for GLG and farmer
  • Larger plants and highest TSG and RA content

2. Processing

Manufacturing Advancements:

  • Patented processing using 1/3 less water
  • Patented Waste water treatment
  • 4,000 metric ton per annum capacity RA 60 for stevia across two facilities
  • 120 metric ton per annum capacity MV 50 for monk fruit at one facility

3. Purification

Patented separation processes:

  • 1,500 metric ton per annum RA 97 capacity across two facilities
  • Consistent tasting high purity finished products from batch to batch

GLG’s Vertically-Integrated Supply Chain
Seed to Shelf Production

We have pursued a strategy of vertical integration in both stevia and monk fruit to achieve the following objectives:

  1. Developing and controlling the highest quality seeds and seedlings,
  2. Achieving a low cost production,
  3. Exercising a high degree of control over our supply chain,
  4. Maintaining the ability to innovate across all key components of the supply chain,
  5. Strong focus on quality assurance and food safety.

Food Safety & Quality Assurance (QA) is a top priority for all of GLG’s operating subsidiaries

GLG’s Vision

Food safety is of paramount importance to GLG.  We endeavor to have all persons involved in production focused on food safety.  We seek to maintain the highest levels of training, certifications, and safety practices and measures in the industry.  Our vision is that every customer of GLG has the highest confidence in our commitment to and execution of the best food safety practices.

GLG’s Mandate

Our Food Safety and QA Team’s mandate is to develop, promote, and execute food safety practices and procedures, consistently over our different subsidiaries, that will reliably ensure the integrity of our products, and to establish requirements for food safety training, documentation, and compliance monitoring in order to demonstrate whenever necessary that our customers can rely on GLG’s facilities and products.

Our Primary Processing facilities professional certifications include:

–      GMP

–      ISO 22000

–      FSSC 22000 (GFSI)

–      Kosher

–      HALAL

–      Non-GMO

GLG’s Strategy

  1. Top-down messaging and focus: All production personnel are responsible for maintaining food safety.
  2. Development/implementation of single Standard Operating Procedure as basis for each facility’s food safety program.
  3. Centralized oversight of all facilities food safety practices/procedures.
  4. HACCP as essential program element to ensure product integrity.
  5. Each facility employs specially trained food safety managers that oversee Food Safety & QA.
  6. Employees take part in regular training and keep abreast of current and emerging issues, ensuring compliance to food safety standards.
  7. Compliance monitoring.

Our Secondary Processing facilities professional certifications include:

–      Secondary Processing

–      GMP

–      ISO 22000

–      FSSC 22000 (GFSI)

–      Kosher

–      HALAL

–      Non-GMO

Step 1: Agriculture
R&D Seed and Plant Development

PATENTED NATURAL SEED BREEDING

Our seed and seedling research and development efforts are designed for the continuous improvement of the RA yield and size of our stevia plants (larger plants means more RA per plant and greater leaf tonnage yield per acre).

Additional activities include commercial plant development and commercial plot testing of new seed and seedling strains. We have invested heavily in intellectual property in the area of plant breeding. The GLG H2 and H3 strains contain 66% and 76% rebaudioside A levels in the raw plant leaf, respectively.

SEED BASES

Our seed base operations are designed for the propagation and growth of proprietary high RA content seed and seedlings to ensure sufficient seeds and seedlings are available for planting each year.

Through our seed base operation, we will continue to control the development of breeding programs designed to produce improved strains of stevia that we believe will result in continually higher RA yield in our stevia leaf. These seeds are used in our growing areas located in 10 growing regions in China that has achieved national diversification of our stevia growing regions in China.

PATENTS

As an additional form of intellectual property protection, we have succeeded in the development of a breeding technology that generates single use seeds that can only grow stevia plants with high total steviol glycosides, high rebaudioside A content and larger size plants one time.

Each year, farmers must sign new contracts with us to receive the high quality seeds for the ensuing year’s planting season. Because the hybrid plant’s seeds cannot be used to grow the same high content RA stevia leaf as the seed from our mother and father plants, we protect the genetic characteristics of our proprietary high quality and high yielding stevia plants and maintain control and security of our high quality leaf supply.

LEARN MORE ABOUT GLG’S AGRICULTURE HERE 

Step 2: Primary Processing & Purification

Stevia Leaf and Monk Fruit Processing

Our extraction and refining operations consist of two components: primary processing of stevia leaf and monk fruit into intermediate stevia extract and monk fruit extract; and purification into final high-grade stevia and luo han guo extract products.

All of our extraction and refining operations are located in China and we have four wholly owned subsidiaries in China that undertake the primary processing and purification operations.

Highlights

• Approximately 4,000 metric tons per year stevia primary extract (RA 60)

• Approximately 130 metric tons per year monk fruit extract (MV 50)

• Extraction, refining, and production capabilities

• Central location in China

• Largest scale for stevia primary extract and monk fruit extract in the world

• Waste water management facilities

• Several technology patents awarded

• Focused on sustainability throughout the facilities (see Sustainability Section)

Primary Processing Operations

Our primary processing operations involve the conversion of raw stevia leaf and monk fruit to intermediate-grade stevia extract (RA 60% pure) and different grades of monk fruit extract (MV 40 or MV 50% pure).

This generally follows the following process for stevia: (i) stevia leaves are dried, crushed and extracted with water; (ii) the resin is washed with food grade ethanol to release the glycosides; and (iii) the glycosides are concentrated with an absorption resin, and dried to formulate the primary extract.

This generally follows the following process for monk fruit: (i) monk fruit is crushed and extracted with water; (ii) the resin is washed with food grade ethanol to release the mogrosides; and (iii) the mogrosides are concentrated with an absorption resin, and dried to formulate the primary extract.

Certifications:

  • GMP
  • ISO 22000
  • FSSC 22000 (GFSI)
  • Kosher
  • HALAL
  • Non-GMO

Step 3: Purification

Purification of Stevia Extracts

Our purification facilities focus on further reefing our primary stevia extracts into higher levels of purity of specific glycosides and higher total steviol glycosides to meets such standards as JECFA and the FDA.  We will also be looking at further purifying monk fruit extracts as a future activity based on market demand.   Purification of intermediate stevia extract to final products generally follows two steps:

  • the primary extract is dissolved in a water-ethanol solvent mixture and further processed by filtration, crystallization, and centrifugation steps; and
  • the resulting preparation of crystals is rinsed with food grade ethanol and vacuum-dried to yield the final high-grade Rebaudioside A product.

Highlights

• Current production capacity of 1,500 metric tons of RA 97 at our two facilities located in Qingdao

• We own or have access to certain proprietary and patented technology for producing high-grade stevia extract.

Certifications include:

  • GMP
  • ISO 22000
  • FSSC 22000 (GFSI)
  • Kosher
  • HALAL
  • Non-GMO