News View - BaselArea 
Aeschenvorstadt 36
4010 Basel, Switzerland
Tel. +41 61 295 50 00
info@baselarea.ch
Evolva to Acquire Abunda Nutrition
The Basel based company announces today that it plans to acquire its R&D partner Abunda Nutrition, Inc.
Evolva and San Francisco-based Abunda have collaborated on the development of Abunda’s next-generation nutritional ingredients since 2009. One part of this collaboration, using Evolva’s proprietary technology, succeeded in making the key components of the natural high intensity sweetener Stevia via fermentation in yeast. This process bypasses the complex logistics associated with the traditional cultivation, processing and refining of Stevia plants, and allows pure Stevia sweetness components to be produced.
The value of the global sweetener market is currently estimated at USD 70 billion p.a., with sugar the dominant product. Within this market, Stevia-based sweeteners are the fastest growing segment, with demand driven in part because Stevia extracts have 200-300 times the sweetness of sugar, but also because of increasing consumer demand for health, wellness, and performance products that are low-carbohydrate and low-sugar. By enabling the introduction of new sweetener products with compelling health, taste and other benefits for consumers, pure fermentation-derived Stevia components can potentially take an important part of the overall sweetener market.
In addition to Stevia, Evolva will obtain full ownership of certain additional development-stage compounds with relevance in cardiovascular health and other nutrition sectors. Clinical nutrition trials have been conducted on selected compounds.