Tate & Lyle PLC, a global provider of food and beverage solutions and ingredients, and Nutriati, an ingredient technology company developing solutions from one of the industry’s most functional plant-based ingredients, have signed an exclusive five-year partnership for Tate & Lyle to distribute high quality, sustainable chickpea protein and flour.

The partnership will make Nutriati’s chickpea derived solutions, which were launched into the market in 2018, more widely available in the food and beverage and nutrition spaces. It will focus on solutions and opportunities that align with the shared goal of providing customers with healthy and highly nutritious plant-based products that are produced responsibly.

Grocery sales of plant-based foods that directly replace animal products have grown 27 percent in the past year to $7 billion. Globally, 23 percent of consumers are limiting the amount of meat they consume and last year, the plant-based meat alternatives market grew twice as fast as conventional meat.

Nick Hampton, chief executive of Tate & Lyle, said: “We are excited to partner with Nutriati to offer our customers chickpea protein and flour which are on-trend, plant-based ingredients. This partnership expands and complements our existing ingredient portfolio perfectly and allows us to offer an even wider range of solutions as we grow with our customers.”

Victoria Spadaro Grant, president, innovation, & commercial development at Tate & Lyle, added: “We are delighted to partner with Nutriati, a company that has developed patented technology to produce highly functional and sustainable plant-based ingredients through an environmentally friendly water-free separation method. We are confident that combining Nutriati’s technology and expertise with Tate & Lyle’s global scale and capabilities in applications development, sales and quality assurance, will help us fully maximize the unique functional benefits of these products, and ensure more consumers get the plant-based products they are asking for on the dinner table.”

Nutriati’s Artesa ingredients offer solutions to taste and texture challenges for plant-based products and through this partnership, Tate & Lyle will provide its customers with access to Nutriati’s Artesa Chickpea Flour and Artesa Chickpea Protein. Both highly functional ingredients offer a superior, premium taste and mouthfeel experience. Artesa Chickpea Flour is an extremely versatile ingredient, creating the opportunity for unique texture and taste profiles in baked goods, snacks and plant-based meats, for example. It also contains only 1 percent fat which is less than any other chickpea flour and can be used to lower the fat content of some products and improve nutrition in gluten-free products. Nutriati’s Artesa Chickpea Protein is popular in plant-based formulations across food and drink, and in nutrition fortification.

This unique range of chickpea-based products will be supported by Tate & Lyle’s global network of application laboratories, scientists and technical sales force, to support even more customers as they seek to accelerate product development and speed to market.

Michael Todd, chief executive of Nutriati, commented: “Nutriati’s patented Artesa PureProcess is a versatile processing solution that extracts functional ingredients from plant-based inputs. Our ingredient portfolio delivers the highest quality solution through clean taste, a high level of functionality and sustainable practices across our supply chain. Together with Tate & Lyle, we look forward to leveraging the strengths of both parties and further unlocking their full potential.”