Low-Cost Sweetener Developed by Alkem Lab
Recently, Mumbai-based drugmaker developed a low-cost Sweetener that would be a game changer in the market. It would be 40 times less than market leader Zydus Cadila’s Sugar Free.
An online news portal about business and economy, economictimes.indiatimes.com writes about the low-cost sweetener which is developed by Alkem Laboratories, “Alkem, one of the top ten companies in the domestic market by sales, says its ‘Nano Sugar’ has seven times the sweetness of normal sugar and thereby reduces calorie intake proportionately. It is made from sugarcane like ordinary sugar but the company says it has managed to concentrate the cane juice to increase the sweetness of the product several times.”
In the comparison of the sweetener, the news portal writes, “Besides Ahmedabad-based Zydus Cadila several other firms sell artificial sweeteners including Delhi-based Mankind and Baroda-based Alembic to help consumer fight lifestyle diseases. Alkem itself has a sugarfree product Blocal One Drop that is priced at a premium (Rs 200 for 20 gram). These are all derived using an artificial product sucralose that costs about Rs 6,000 per kg and pushes up the cost of the final product.”
About the consume and manufacturing of the drug, the news portal writes, “The product will be manufactured from Alkem’s facility in Bharuch (Gujarat), with an annual production capacity of 1.2 lakh metric tonne — equivalent to a mid-sized sugar company. Alkem has annual sales of Rs 1,600 crore and with its existing capacity for the sweetener it can meet almost 0.5% of the country’s total sugar consumption.
India consumes as much as 25 million tonne sugar every year. Sugar prices have crashed by a third after hitting a peak in January this year. At present, sugar is sold to consumers at around Rs 30 per kg while a 100 gram pack of Zydus Cadila’s Sugar Free costs Rs 125 or Rs 1,250 per kg.”
