A Trader Turns To Food Science

Ag merchant Bunge is helping develop new recipes for fast-food chains and packaged-goods purveyors reeling from war

When agricultural exports through the Black Sea plummeted following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, big food companies suddenly found themselves scrambling to find alternative sources of grains and oilseeds. But processed foods these days are complex mélanges of stabilizers, additives, preservatives, sweeteners, salt and flavorings in addition to basic ingredients. So a shift in one component-even changing the provenance of the sunflower oil-can require tweaking the entire recipe to maintain the precise taste and texture consumers expect.

For Bunge Ltd., a 205-year-old agricultural trading house, that presented an opportunity. In the past five years, the company has quintupled spending on research aimed at helping fast-food chains and packaged-goods purveyors such as Unilever Plc and Lotte Corp. develop new recipes and quickly adapt old ones if they need to pivot to a different source or change ingredients.

Today, Bunge (BUN-ghee) has 15 "innovation centers" in nine countries, with more than 200 food scientists working on such initiatives. "We had a big customer base reliant upon those commodities that we had planned to bring in from the Black Sea," Aaron Buettner, Bunge's president of food solutions, says while sampling the company's vegan meatballs and nachos at its headquarters in St. Louis. "Our European team was working on conversions and tests seven days a week."

It was the near-halt in exports of sunflower oil from Russia and Ukraine that did the most damage, because the oil's high smoke point and neutral taste and color are hard to replicate. Although Buettner wouldn't disclose details, he says Bunge was able to shift some customers to sunflower oil sourced from western Europe or Argentina. And Bunge's food scientists helped others-producers of breads, salad dressings, chips, cookies and more-replace sunflower with canola or palm oil. "We had to organize a response customer by customer," Buettner says.