South Korean food and bio company Daesang Corporation reported that its North American allulose sales surged 450% year over year in 2025, with its customer base reaching approximately 30 companies spanning the beverage, dairy, confectionery, nutrition, and sauce sectors — all within two years of the company's 2023 market entry.
The growth signals how quickly food and beverage manufacturers are moving to reformulate for sugar reduction, a category shift that has direct implications for c-store foodservice program suppliers and the branded dispensed-beverage and packaged-drink segments retailers stock every day.
What's Driving Demand
The backdrop is familiar to anyone watching front-of-store sales trends: consumers are cutting sugar, and GLP-1 medication adoption is reinforcing that behavioral shift. Allulose — a rare sugar found naturally in figs and raisins — delivers roughly 70% of sugar's sweetness at only about 10% of the calories, making it attractive to product developers trying to hit lower-sugar targets without sacrificing mouthfeel or flavor. In carbonated beverages and sports drinks it supports clean taste; in ice cream and jams it helps maintain texture; in baked goods it contributes moisture and browning. All of those applications map directly onto categories that drive convenience-channel inside sales.
Daesang launched its global sugar-reduction brand Sweevero in 2024 to move beyond commodity ingredient supply. The platform combines allulose with complementary sweetening ingredients, customized blends, and taste-modulation technologies — positioning the company as a formulation partner rather than a straight sweetener supplier. That full-solution approach matters to food manufacturers trying to reformulate efficiently without multiple vendor relationships.
Supply Chain & Scale
To back up commercial commitments, Daesang invested approximately KRW 30 billion in July 2023 to build a dedicated allulose production facility at its starch-and-sweetener plant in Gunsan, South Korea. The company holds patents on the enzymes used in allulose production as well as food-application patents, giving it proprietary leverage on quality control and cost. Customer support for North American accounts runs through a U.S. subsidiary.
Daesang is a regular exhibitor at Natural Products Expo West, IFT FIRST, SupplySide Global, and Food Ingredients Europe — the industry circuit where branded c-store suppliers and foodservice ingredient buyers scout emerging input materials. "Through Sweevero, we aim to go beyond supplying allulose by helping customers address the challenges of sugar reduction, particularly in taste and product quality," said Hyo-hoon Lee, head of Ingredient Marketing at Daesang.
What's Next
Daesang's stated roadmap extends Sweevero's reach into Canada, Latin America, Europe, Japan, and Southeast Asia, contingent on evolving regulatory frameworks. The company is also evaluating regional production capacity — including potential local manufacturing in key markets — to reduce supply-chain risk for customers. For c-store channel buyers and their branded-beverage and better-for-you snack vendor partners, Daesang's trajectory underscores that sugar-reduction ingredient availability is no longer a bottleneck: the question is how fast finished-product innovation can follow consumer demand into the forecourt cooler and the grab-and-go set.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
