Stevia is produced without Genetically Modified Organisms. One hectare of stevia produces approximately 100kg of Reb A, or equivalent to 20 MT of sugar equivalent sweetening. This compares with sugar production, where 1 hectare typically only produces less than half of the sweetener of stevia, with a good farm producing 10 MT of sugar per hectare. Accordingly, each hectare of stevia in the ground uses less land and water to produce twice as much sweetener as sugar, thus freeing up more land for food and energy production.
Stevia is a robust plant which requires little inputs of chemicals. This makes the plant economically viable in subsistence-level communities without the resources to purchase insecticides and herbicides.
Committed to a sustainable production model
- Major water treatment and recycling plant that allows us to recycle over 60% of our water directly and ensures that all of the water used is treated and returned in clean form.
- A state of the art bio-gas facility that takes leaf mulch and converts it into electricity which is piped directly into the local grid. This is an environmentally sound solution to large scale extraction from leaf and saves money
- Large new warehouse capacity on site for improved leaf storage and tracking
- During the year we made further improvements to the sustainability of our production model
- At our Enstek refinery near Kuala Lumpur, we invested some $3m in recycling capacity
- At PureCircle Jiangxi we installed large water recycling and purification capacity and a leaf mulch biogas facility to further improve the environmental footprint of our extraction activities.
