Dive Brief:
- Ingredion is spending more than $100 million to improve the efficiency and production capabilities of its Indianapolis facility.
- The company said the investment will allow it to produce more texture-based ingredients while providing additional flexibility to add new offerings to its portfolio.
- Ingredion also noted that it plans to modernize equipment at the Indiana facility, which will improve operational efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Dive Insight:
Texture impacts how everything from chips and peanut butter to pizza and snack bars appear, feel, taste, release flavor and even sound. More than 50% of consumers would reject a product if they don’t like the texture, Ingredion told investors last fall.
Texture’s importance provides a huge growth opportunity for ingredients companies as food and beverage manufacturers look to differentiate themselves from their competitors and keep consumers coming back.
As texture becomes more central to Ingredion’s portfolio, the company is spending millions to upgrade the Indianapolis facility and maintain competitiveness in the segment. The Indianapolis facility makes a variety of starches and texturizing ingredients for confections, beverages, soups, sauces, batters and breadings.
It’s the most money Ingredion has invested in a plant in five years, the company told Food Dive.
Ingredion predicts that its texture sales will continue to rise, reporting $2.5 billion in net sales during 2024 from its textures and healthful solutions business. The company projects that total to jump to $3 billion in 2028.
“As Ingredion has driven volume growth for texture solutions over the past several quarters, these investments will expand our capacity and support future customer growth,” Valdirene Evans, senior vice president and president of global texture solutions at Ingredion, said in a statement. “Additionally, these investments will enable the Indianapolis plant to continue to lead in supplying the highest quality and most innovative specialty starch-based texturizers for global customers.”
The project is expected to be completed in the second half of 2026.
Ingredion is the latest company to announce a construction project where sustainability is a key component. Cargill and PepsiCo also have recently incorporated sustainability into their new locations.
As ingredient companies build new facilities, or add on to existing ones, it makes sense to ensure the project is environmentally friendly. This allows them to further promote their sustainability attributes to food manufacturers, who then can highlight them in products to shoppers.
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