One of Cargill's biggest innovations of the past decade is getting an important test in Argentina.
A new "mid-calorie" Coca-Cola that recently launched there uses Cargill's brand of the sugar substitute stevia, which is extracted from the leaf of a shrub and is considered a natural zero-calorie sweetener.
Cargill's product, called Truvia, is already a hit in the packet sweetener market and has made headway in noncarbonated beverages such as juice and ready-to-drink tea.
But it has yet to crack the beverage business big time, particularly the gigantic market for carbonated drinks.
"Truvia has done very well as a tabletop sweetener, but its best days in beverages are still ahead of us, " said John Sicher, publisher of Beverage Digest. "The industry is not going to know the real potential of stevia in carbonated soft drinks for another two or three years."
But the industry will get a good taste of stevia's potential with the Argentina launch of "Coca-Cola Life," the first time the Coca-Cola Co. has used the sweetener in its flagship product.
Stevia is a relatively new ingredient, getting the green light from federal food regulators about five years ago. The zero-calorie sweetener is derived from the stevia plant, which is native to Latin America but also is grown in Asia.
Stevia's allure is simple: It's not an artificial sweetener, so it has a healthy halo, industry analysts say.