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One of the country’s leading ingredient suppliers is rethinking the way it does business amid unprecedented demand from food and beverage companies to reformulate their products to match the latest consumer trends.
Ingredion, which sells products to more than 17,000 customers worldwide in more than 120 countries, is facing record interest from food companies looking to add protein, reduce sugar, adopt clean label formulations or make their products more affordable.
“Businesses like ours need to stay closer to their customers than ever before,” said Jim Zallie, CEO of Ingredion. “We love our customers and want to serve every single one of them. If you could, you could create categories, but you can’t.”
Zallie wouldn’t go so far as to say that Ingredion, which had net sales of $7.2 billion last year, is turning away customers, but the 120-year-old company is becoming more selective about which food manufacturers it agrees to work with and how it deploys its resources.
When deciding how to partner with food manufacturers, Ingredion evaluates whether its insights align with current trends, Zallie said. The Illinois-based company also looks at what categories its customers are in (private label or clean label are particularly attractive), how fast the business is growing, and what impact partnerships will have on Ingredion’s sales and profits.
“We have to be very smart about which clients have the right strategy and portfolio that aligns with the trends we can best help,” Zallie said.
Ingredion increasingly wants its customers “to be part of the process” in finding solutions for their products, according to Patrick Kalotis, Ingredion’s senior vice president of texture and health solutions.
He said more food manufacturers looking for faster reformulation options are choosing Ingredion because of its expertise and extensive database covering thousands of ingredients. Ingredion’s solutions business recently surpassed $1 billion in revenue and is one of its fastest-growing segments, according to Kalotis.
Ingredion not only supplies raw materials, but also helps provide solutions to a variety of problems. For example, Ingredion recently helped a restaurant chain ensure that its french fries remained crispy when delivered to individuals’ homes. This also helped food manufacturers create snack bars with added protein without the chalky texture.
To speed up the reorganization process, Ingredion prioritized what it calls a co-brief. Here, the company talks with customers to determine what they want to achieve before delivering a “viable prototype” in 15 days, down from the three months just a few years ago. In 2025 alone, Ingredion received fewer than 2,000 such requests from customers, resulting in approximately 500 briefs.
The materials giant also has a network of 32 global “idea labs.” In this lab, food manufacturers and other customers work with Ingredion to improve their products to reach their full potential or address other market barriers. We also employ food scientists and culinary chefs who understand ingredient innovation. “Thanks to our closeness with our customers and the expertise we have, we can effectively guarantee higher product success rates,” Kalotis said. “If we have a much higher customer success rate, they are more likely to come back to us.”
Zallie, who has led Ingredion since 2018, said demand for Ingredion’s solution services is unlikely to slow down anytime soon.
He said there is a lot of “pressure on manufacturers of CPG branded products to drive more innovation,” especially as consumers spend less and younger shoppers favor private label products.
The Make America Healthy Again initiative is still in its infancy and has not been a major catalyst for innovation thus far, but it could become a bigger factor driving ingredient change.
“We look at clean label and every other reformulation as an opportunity for us,” Zallie said. “So we’re optimistic, but there are headwinds that the industry as a whole is facing, so you have to be very smart about it.”
