Alland & Robert

Founded in 1884, Alland & Robert is a leader of natural gum exudates with a strong expertise in the processing, purification, and manufacturing of acacia gum. On the occasion of Alland & Robert joining Valorial, we met with Dr. Isabelle JAOUEN, R&D Director at Alland & Robert. #Welcome

What is your core business? What markets are you targeting?

Since 1884, Alland & Robert is a French family business and pioneer in natural tree exudates. Thanks to its expertise, Alland & Robert exports to more than 70 countries through a network of 50 distributors. Acacia gum is an all-natural additive and ingredient which comes from the exudation of the acacia tree. Acacia gum is widely used in a wide variety of food, cosmetic, pharmaceutical, and technical products around the world.

To ensure the highest quality of its products and grow sustainably, Alland & Robert is fully committed to an ambitious corporate social responsibility policy. For this, Alland & Robert relies on a large network of raw material suppliers in Africa, international certifications, a dedicated R&D team and a research partnership with the University of Montpellier, which has an international reputation.

Tell us about your latest news?

Since the beginning of 2023, Alland & Robert innovated with the launch of a new product: SYNDEO® GELLING, a natural texturizer and gelling agent which consists of acacia gum mixed with other natural hydrocolloids. 100% vegetable, Syndeo® Gelling provides texturizing, thickening, stabilizing and binding properties for the substitution of non-vegetable gelling agents in applications such as gummies, marshmallows, mousses, and other applications.

Syndeo® Gelling makes it possible to reformulate several types of traditional products as vegan products, including those based on gelatin. Syndeo® Gelling provides a compromise between gelatin and pectin in terms of texture, and also helps stabilize vegan formulations of lozenges, gummies, jellies and marshmallows which represent more than 80% of products in the confectionery category containing gelatin.

Why are you joining Valorial?

Alland & Robert is constantly looking for partnerships and collaborative projects; to offer its expertise and collaborate on food research and development.

What is your vision of innovation?

Product innovation is at the heart of Alland & Robert’s success, thanks to our Research & Development which has evolved considerably over time. R&D has greatly expanded and diversified and today it covers many demanding and exciting projects.

For several years, we have been working on two very important areas: fundamental research, thanks to our partnership with the University of Montpellier, and application research, which is entirely internalized. We have the means to achieve our ambitions thanks to a R&D laboratory integrated into our premises in Normandy, training of internal tasting panels, recruitments in the team, and regular collaborations with manufacturing centers for samples under industrial conditions or with collaborative food innovation networks.

Our R&D department is essential to best meet the expectations of our customers and offer them relevant solutions. There is still a lot to be done to promote natural gums, which have many strengths in various industries!

However, we are also innovating from in our CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) commitments. For many years, we have been committed to an ambitious policy. In 2010, we began to assess and reduce our carbon footprint with carbon assessments. Since 2009, we have been a member of SEDEX (Supplier Ethical Data Exchange), a non-profit organization dedicated to responsible and ethical business practices in global supply chains. Since 2013, we have also been audited by SMETA (Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit), the SEDEX social audit framework which focuses on four pillars: working conditions in our sector, health and safety of people, environment and the management of our resources, the ethics of our practices.

In addition, we are members of Ecovadis, the main global platform for evaluating responsible purchasing and CSR performance, which today places us among the 25% of the best rated companies. In 2021, we created a Corporate Foundation dedicated to the conservation of the Sahelian environment and the support of local communities. Finally, at the beginning of 2023, we signed the “We Use Wild” pledge created by the NGO “Traffic”, an organization working to make the trade of wild plants more ethical and sustainable.

All this reflects the very important commitment of our company to create an ethical, responsible and sustainable industry.

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