Speaker 1:
From the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, welcome Inside the ICE House. Our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange is your go-to for the latest on markets, leadership, vision, and business. For over 230 years, the NYSE has been the beating heart of global growth. Each week we bring you inspiring stories of innovators, job creators, and the movers and shakers of capitalism here at the NYSE and ICEs Exchanges around the world. Now, let's go Inside the ICE House. Here's your Host, Lance Glinn.
Lance Glinn:
As global populations grow and access to information increases, food preferences have evolved rapidly, reflecting new awareness and priorities among consumers. Dietary habits today are influenced by diverse factors from environmental and ethical concerns to health trends and cultural influences, creating a complex and dynamic food landscape. In response, consumer demands now reflect an increasing desire for healthier, sustainable, and ethically produced food options with more people actively seeking plant-based, organic and wholefood ingredients. This shift is not merely a trend, but a fundamental change in how a significant portion of society perceives food and nutrition, underscoring a collective interest in foods and ingredients that support both personal wellness and a sustainable planet. Ultimately, the evolution of food preferences signals the need for continuous adaptation from food producers and ingredient suppliers to meet these new expectations. The focus on transparency, health and sustainability requires a reimagination of traditional ingredients and processes.
Ingredion, that's NYSE ticker symbol INGR, is leading that transformation, formulating ingredients for taste, nutrition, and sustainability. Today's guest, Ingredion President and CEO, Jim Zallie was tasked with growing the company in January 2018 and has led it to great achievement and success over the last six plus years. The architect of Ingredion Idea Labs, a global network of innovation centers, one of which we are currently in today, Jim is an ingredients veteran journeying through the industry for the last four decades. Recording from Bridgewater, New Jersey, Jim joins us Inside the ICE House on Ingredion's first Texture Innovation Day. Today we will discuss company growth during his six-year tenure as president and CEO, and detail how he and Ingredion's leadership view the future of the ingredients' industry. We'll also expound on the importance of texture and how changing consumer demands are influencing Ingredion's products and services. Our conversation with Jim Zallie, President and CEO of Ingredion is coming up right after this.
Speaker 2:
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Lance Glinn:
Welcome back. Remember to subscribe wherever you listen and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts so that others know where to find us. You can also now find full video episodes of the Inside the ICE House Podcast on tv.nyse.com and on the NYSE YouTube channel. Our guest today, Jim Zallie, was appointed President and CEO of Ingredion, that's NYSE ticker symbol INGR in January 2018. He previously served as Executive Vice President, Global Specialties and President of the Americas. Jim joined Ingredion in 2010 when the company acquired National Starch and is a veteran of over four decades in the ingredients' industry. Jim, thanks so much for joining us Inside the ICE House.
Jim Zallie:
It's a pleasure to be here.
Lance Glinn:
I normally start off these podcasts by welcoming our guests to the New York Stock Exchange, but obviously as you can see, and as you know, we're not at the New York Stock Exchange, we're at one of Ingredion's Idea Labs here in Bridgewater, New Jersey. So for all Ingredion does and all Ingredion has accomplished, what does this location and others like it mean to just the overall brand and the overall company?
Jim Zallie:
Well, let me start by saying what it means to me. I started my career here 41 years ago, and so it's like coming home for me. My office was one of the labs upstairs, but this serves as our world technical headquarters and it's one of 30 what we call, Idea Labs where we work to develop new food ingredients, but we also work with customers to co-create products that help drive consumer preferred innovation. We look at our ingredients as being differentiated aspects to a label, to a front of pack claim that can make a food product more desirable for a consumer, and thus we're helping our customer, a food company to formulate winning products in the marketplace. So for me, it's where all the magic happens, really, from a standpoint of the technology and the understanding of food at its most basic level.
Lance Glinn:
And Ingredion plays a role in millions of lives each day, but it's a company and its products are ones that are, I guess you can even say, behind the scenes when it comes to breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So with that being said, while we obviously just touched on where we are in the Idea Labs, how would you define Ingredion as a company, its mission and its real purpose and service?
Jim Zallie:
Our purpose is to bring together the potential of people, nature and technology to make life better. We have five cornerstone values. One is around just the people element of things, which is everyone belongs, and that's a value that served us extremely well. We are a company that, we have a people-centric growth culture, so we have a value around care first. We also have a value around innovate boldly. And so that's where again, a technical headquarters like this matters a great deal. And we lean into and live our values and we have, we think, a very noble purpose. And so that guides us along with a winning aspiration, which is to be the go-to provider for texture and healthful solutions that make healthy taste better. So all of that guides us as far as our mission as an organization.
Lance Glinn:
And so you bring up the word texture, now we're here, Ingredion is celebrating its first Texture Innovation Day here in Bridgewater, New Jersey. And while flavor, when you eat something often takes center stage in our eating experiences, we love to feel that crunch of a chip, that crispiness of a french fry, the fizz of a soda. How is texture to you influencing the future of food and the ingredients' industry? And what insights did you hope to share when you were talking with people at today's event?
Jim Zallie:
Yeah. What we conveyed today at our Texture Innovation Day here in Bridgewater was that, we feel that texture is undervalued or underappreciated and not well understood from a standpoint of its impact on overall taste and something called, overall liking. Flavor has very standardized definitions and descriptors, whereas texture does not. Yet, in Japan for example, there are over 140 descriptors, in China, it's greater than 400. So for us as a company, there's so much opportunity to correlate consumer preference, consumer insights with sensory understanding, and then texture data measurement science, and the correlation of the structure function of a food product to how it is perceived by consumers. And we use an expression that, eating is simple, but food is complex. And so texture, we believe is a frontier that can impact food preference and overall liking, similar to how flavor is thought of in its impact. And so we're very excited about what the future holds for us as we leverage our toolbox of texturizing ingredients to really, really understand at a scientific level how texture can drive consumer preference and work with our customers.
Lance Glinn:
And you talk about how texture helps with the overall liking and you think of a piece of pizza and you lift up that pizza and you see the cheese oozing out all part of the texture. And texture is more than just feeling that crunchiness or feeling that crispiness, it's also about seeing that cheese flowing down from that slice of pizza. So how are you with texture addressing all of those sensory details other than the ones that we feel with our mouths?
Jim Zallie:
Well, first of all, you're highlighting the multifaceted nature of texture. So texture first of all starts with the appearance to your point. So what your eye visualizes, you're processing how that product is then going to taste when you begin to consume it. So it starts with the appearance and the appearance and the overall surface structure, let's say, will impact how that product feels in the mouth. So there's that aspect of it. It is then the mouth feel of the product, it is the flavor release and how the texture of the food impacts the flavor release. It's also the sound or the auditory experience.
Just a funny little anecdote. One of the major snack manufacturers is working, as I understand it, to work with a software company to specifically have noise-canceling software for gamers that are typically consuming their snacks that are crunchy while they're gaming, but need the noise-canceling effect for them because they want to be able to do both. So that underscores how texture is impacting society and trends. We talked a lot about one of the drivers for texture is the stress that's being put on foods that are being delivered to homes now, and the fact that they have to be transported and yet taste fresh or be crispy or not soggy. And that's where we come in.
And it's these trends, in this case I was giving you an example of gaming, but also food delivery or just overall convenience or if you're formulating a product just to be healthier, replacing sugar, replacing the fat, having a mouthfeel that's either rich and indulgent with less fat or that has the mouthfeel of sugar when sugar is replaced as well. So many, many aspects to trends in the marketplace that are putting demands on textural innovation. And that's again, where we come in and that's where we think we have a great opportunity ahead of us as a company.
Lance Glinn:
And you mentioned textural innovation and innovation, I think arises because there's a problem that needs a solution. You mentioned how gamers want to be able to listen to what they're doing in their headsets, but if they're chewing or if they're eating chips or they're eating fries, they obviously then deal with the crunchiness noise that comes with that too, so you have to innovate to find a solution for that. When we first walked into this building, one of the first things I noticed was that kitchen that's very close to the entrance, and I would think that's where a lot of that innovation does happen. So when it comes to innovation, what is the overall company philosophy towards it? And how does the company work together to identify the problems and then ultimately, find a solution and create new ingredients to potentially take away that noise that comes with the chip?
Jim Zallie:
I think all innovation starts with the customer and us listening to the customer, and then the customer obviously listening to the consumer and the consumer trends and what the consumer prefers. But I think when you think about the opportunities to innovate within the area of texture, there is, we believe a whole psychology of the consumer that our customers will know better than us on opportunities to develop an offering for perhaps a specific eating occasion or a particular mood that a consumer might be in. Example that I would give you is that, for some consumers that are part of a busy day, they may want something that fits their mood at the time, which might be higher energy and crunchy and crispy, something that they want to chew on like that. Whereas in the evening when they're getting closer to bedtime, they may want something that's calming or something that is smooth and creamy. Us listening to our customers on what they want and what they need to develop. One of the examples we showed on the tour today is crispy fries for food delivery. That would be another example.
We work very closely listening to our customers and would work to clarify upfront what we call, a project brief, understanding exactly what they want to try to achieve, and then translate that into a formulation or recipe that our food scientists and what we call, cool analogists will work to develop. And oftentimes we're trying to develop a restaurant quality product that would be of that high caliber, that would feature what our ingredients do uniquely to impart the attributes to meet the specifications in the brief.
And we've earned a reputation working with customers around the world, 18,000 customers, more than 120 countries around the world, we're a global company. And so with that value also anchoring us of innovate boldly, our scientists are not afraid to take some risks. And we're also a company that leverages plant-based raw materials. We're a plant-based company leveraging the raw materials such as corn, tapioca, rice, potato, pea, and we would process those products in such a way to impart functionalities and know how to correlate all of that to texture and how it impacts texture. So literally, when it comes to innovation, our innovation starts at the plant level as well as the downstream level of the processing that goes into those ingredients to impart structures that would impact texture. So it's a complex set of science starting at the plant level through food engineering and then through sensory science to pull it all together on behalf of our customers.
Lance Glinn:
I want to pivot the conversation to you, your background, your history. And fun fact, before I get into that, we're both sitting at the table, two people with master's degrees from Rutgers University.
Jim Zallie:
Oh, there you go.
Lance Glinn:
I just had to put that out there first. Me, Rutgers alumni. I know you, a Penn State alumni.
Jim Zallie:
A Nittany Lion and a Scarlet Knight. Yes.
Lance Glinn:
There you go. Your career in the industry began a little bit further from the C-suite where you're at now, but nevertheless, you are a veteran in the ingredients' industry. So how were you first introduced to the industry and how did those early days or how have those early days shaped your journey since?
Jim Zallie:
I was just very, very fortunate because I did not know about food science as a major or food technology as a major. I was just fortunate when I was in high school to be pushed by someone to look at career options that merged my interest in science, chemistry and nutrition at the time. And I came upon food science and that led me to go to Penn State, which had a major in food science. And then I was just very fortunate to graduate and be hired by a company called National Starch and Chemical Company. The starch division of that company was then purchased by a company called Corn Products International back in 2010. We were merged and rebranded in 2012 to be called Ingredion, which means ingredients in action. So that's what the name Ingredion means.
And I've just been fortunate to have worked for this company combined now for 41 years and have challenges that have been put for me where I've been able to grow my career personally. That's helped shape the way I lead because of the opportunities afforded to me. But I have a love of the food industry and I have a love of science and technology and have seen the value that we can impact around the world. And I think we have a very noble purpose and are a very innovative company. And all of that makes it easy to come to work every day.
Lance Glinn:
And you became president and CEO in January of 2018. Now, most leaders when they take the helm, they have their 30, 60, 90 plan. They have a layout for how they want that whole first year, those first three months at least to go. When you took that role, what were some of the objectives, some of the missions, some of your goals that you wanted to really attack come those first initial days, initial months and years?
Jim Zallie:
Well, so when I first took over, the industry was changing, and we were a company that was a spinoff in 1998 at the time, corn products from CPC International. And so we were literally 20 years old and we had almost been taken over by another publicly traded company, and that deal had fallen through as we went through The Great Recession. And our values were 20 years old at the time. And they were very good values, respectable values such as excellence, such as quality, such as safety, but they were not contemporary and they were not inspirational and motivational.
So one of the first things I did was work with the leadership team to make sure we put in place those cornerstone foundational values that we still have in place today that I think we live, put in place our purpose. Because I knew we were going to go through a little bit of a tough patch because some of our portfolio was a little bit dated and was going to come under some pressure. And I knew I needed to have our employees rally around a purpose values, and I wanted to build a people-centric growth culture. It's one of the things I'm very passionate about is, I think in society today, that if you don't have a strong culture, your business will suffer. And if you don't focus on people and people will see through whether you're really living your values and whether you have a care for people in general.
Now, obviously you're running a business, it's not easy at all times, but I think if you take your eye off of either the customer or the employee and you get very internally focused, it's a recipe for failure. So that's what we try to nurture at Ingredion. I think we've done a pretty good job with that because our listen survey, we do a listen survey each and every year, and we do a mid-year survey, our participation rates are well above industry benchmarks, and our engagement scores are above industry benchmarks, and we're very proud of that. And that's a signal to me that we have employees that are very vested, but also we in positions of leadership and management, have a responsibility and accountability to them to continuously try to figure out on their behalf how they can have fulfilled careers, be motivated.
I look at my job as CEO as Chief Clarity Officer. It's one of the most important roles that I have, is to continuously try to synthesize what we're doing, why we're doing it. And while we start each and every year with five, only five crystal clear priorities, you have to continuously update and modify the emphasis around those priorities at any time of the year because some things take precedent at different times. And so that's all necessary to have a highly engaged workforce and employees that feel they're connected to the purpose, the values, and the strategy. And I just think that's really the recipe for success in today's business.
Lance Glinn:
You mentioned a rebrand in 2012 to Ingredion. How have you seen from that date, from that rebrand of the company over the last now decade plus evolve from where it was when it became Ingredion to where it is now on the precipice of 2025?
Jim Zallie:
The reason for the rebrand at the time was obviously, there were two different companies coming together, so it was an opportunity to rebrand. But we did not want to be perceived of as an agribusiness company that was creating its value more based on just efficiencies associated with commodities or commoditization products, but more of a specialty ingredients provider. So that rebranding gave us the license to move more towards what we're doing today, which is to evolve to be not just a specialty ingredients provider, but a specialty solutions provider. So we've worked consciously over the last 12 years to make strategic acquisitions and organic growth investments.
One example would be, we're the largest producer today of high intensity natural sweeteners, which is Stevia, and for the trend towards reduced sugar, no sugar type products, as well as avoiding high intensity artificial sweeteners. That Ingredion category or a capability is something we did not have five, seven years ago. We were thought of more of as a starch and sweetener company, not necessarily a specialty solutions provider. And we've added also protein fortification ingredients as well. The example I would give you is, if a company came to us five, seven years ago and asked us to produce the following product, we could not do it, but today we can. The product I would give you the example of is one of the largest food categories that everybody likes, which is ice cream. If someone came to us 5, 6, 7 years ago and said, "Can you produce a sugar-free or reduced sugar, low-fat or no fat, plant-based, dairy-free indulgent ice cream?" We could not have done that.
Today, we have the high-intensity natural sweetener to produce it with low to no sugar. We have the protein-based ingredients that are non-dairy that can replace the milk or the dairy, and we have the ingredients to help impart a very rich creamy mouthfeel to make the product indulgent and also prevent ice crystal formation during freeze thawing. And so it's a capability that we've built that has made us much more relevant to more opportunities than we ever have had. And I think that that's the direction we are going to continue to head in. And that's where we see the opportunity to be a very complete texture solutions provider as well as a company that supplies sugar-free alternatives and protein and fiber-fortified ingredients as well.
Lance Glinn:
And I think those opportunities really came to fruition this past quarter. I brought up your 2024 Q3 earnings, and in those same remarks, you highlighted a 29% increase in adjusted operating income, marking not only your best third quarter ever, but the second-highest quarter in company history. What do you believe drove this achievement and how do you now take that success, spread it to Q4 and obviously onto 2025?
Jim Zallie:
Yeah. What I talked about on the earnings call, because obviously we got questions about what's driving the performance, and over the last two years we've delivered greater than 50% total shareholder returns. We're very proud of that. But those accomplishments, those achievements, in our particular case isn't because of some trend that we're riding where the trend is our friend. It is really about the accumulation of doing a lot of little things, I think very well that have culminated to make us a company that's operating well. And what I would say is that, about four years ago, we imposed a global operating model that was meant to leverage best practice against benchmarked examples for operational efficiency when it came to finance, IT, and then ultimately operations and then HR and even some marketing say, back office or areas of expertise. And that helped drive and is driving the efficiencies along with global procurement, I should say, which is also doing a great job for us right now.
And that was not an easy transition because the individuals that were running the businesses wanted to feel like full-fledged general managers. And what we had to say is, "Growth is tough. And in order for us to grow, we really need to trust that we can build those capabilities from a functional excellent standpoint, and there will be efficiency gains there. And we want the go-to-market teams to be much more intimate with customers, sell service as a differentiator, and find those pockets of growth and those opportunities to innovate." And that alone is a full-time job where we can be excellent with the customer at the customer interface level and then trust your colleagues to drive the functional excellence and all the efficiencies, that they will make sure that our service is where it needs to be to customers and it'll all have a customer focus to it.
One of our other values picking up on that is, be preferred. So we want to be preferred by our customers. And so I think it's an accumulation of all of those factors over now the last say, four or five years that's come together that is delivering the results we see today. And I'm hopeful, which is why we held the session today, that innovation and being able to drive consumer preferred innovation on behalf of our customers will continue to propel us forward as a company to deliver shareholder return.
Lance Glinn:
And to have these great achievements, one of the more important things is employee safety. And in those same remarks, you mentioned Ingredion being named a finalist for the National Safety Council's Green Cross for Safety Awards. So with all of this innovation, this striving for success, how do you ensure that employee safety is still among the top priorities so that employees can still come to work every day and they could come up with these innovations and come up with these new products, and new ingredients to help propel Ingredion forward?
Jim Zallie:
Well, first of all, thank you for raising this and thank you for bringing this topic of safety up. It is at the heart of our care first value. And Ingredion, pleased to say, operates at world-class levels of safety, which enabled us to be a finalist, one of three for the Green Cross Award on a national scale this past year. But we operate at levels of safety that are in the top decile of manufacturing companies. And we believe that employee safety and employee well-being, I think we extend it even now to employee well-being, is something that's at the heart of, again, our people-centric growth culture.
And the kind of things that we're talking about is making sure that we have the same muscles developed culturally as we do for caring for employees' personal safety as we do for food safety. Because being an ingredient supplier to the food industry, we all can relate to our ingredients finding their way into consumer products that we all consume as employees of Ingredion, and that you would not want to have anything do harm to anyone. And so we have a very strong culture of quality along with food safety, which builds off of our strong culture for one's personal safety. But we're very, very proud of that. And honestly, that is another foundational value from which I think all companies need to have to be a good company.
Lance Glinn:
I want to pivot a little bit to more of the macro trends just in business, and I'm sure a lot of them involving the ingredients' industry too. AI obviously has been at the forefront of business sectors throughout the last few years. How has it impacted the ingredients industry and are you implementing it in really any form here at Ingredion?
Jim Zallie:
Well, it is, I think beginning to impact the ingredients' industry. Certainly, it's impacting all businesses as it relates to tasks that can be done much more sophisticatedly like forecast accuracy, supply chain efficiency, and just leveraging data that you generate in our operations. We're leveraging AI right now in our operations to reduce tolerance levels for certain specifications, where we can just operate in tighter windows of operation for more efficiency, which can eliminate less waste.
But the exciting, I think frontier that we're looking at, which we talked about today, is in predictive formulation that then can correlate to the structure function understanding of a food and leverage all that big data to be able to accelerate innovation on behalf of our customers and deliver exactly what we want to deliver texturally for a customer. So we are piloting also right now, which is very exciting, a tech service assistant, so think about it as if you were doing a 24/7 chatbot, booking a hotel reservation that you wanted to have questions answered about an experience that you wanted to have on a vacation. And obviously that exists today and will probably be the norm in the next couple of years. In our industry, equally, customers will call a tech service representative and ask for a particular ingredient that would best be suited for what they're trying to formulate. We're developing an AI generated agent that will be able to do that, allowing those specialists to do higher order tasks. And so that's just an example of some of the things that we're piloting right now.
And I just think that's the exciting part of the future, because we're just in the very early stages of this and the impacts from an innovation standpoint have not been felt yet. And we think that AI will absolutely play a differentiating role when it comes to, "How do we take this complex subject of texture solutions and operationalize it and simplify it?" And we think it's going to be key, and so we are piloting it. Because you do have to learn, you'd have to train some of these models, these large language models, so that they are credible and they don't have errors in them that would set you back.
Lance Glinn:
And we talk about trends going on, obviously AI being one of them when it comes to technology, but when you look at the ingredients' industry and you look at what people are eating and how people are eating, there's been a sharp turn over the last 5, 7, 10 years towards gluten-free, dairy-free, vegetarian, sugar reduction, which you mentioned earlier and you brought up Stevia in that case. So could you go into a little bit more detail on what Stevia offers to people and how it's contributing to Ingredion's sustainability efforts in advancing that sugar reduction trend?
Jim Zallie:
Yeah. First of all, I think everybody understands that consuming too much sugar is not good for you, and then also it has a strong correlation obviously, to type two diabetes and obesity. So much so that the FDA now requires companies to label the amount of added sugars on a food products label, which is in addition the natural sugars that find their way in the product itself. So Stevia is 300 times sweeter than table sugar. So it can be used at a very low level to replace sugar, but yet still impart sweetness. The original Stevia leaf extract products that came out, I'll call them, the early generations did though have, which is typical in early generation products, had a bitter or a licorice off taste associated with it. Since then, we've been able to develop through using natural Stevia leaf extract, enzymatic conversions to isolate the best tasting Stevia components. And honestly, they're really great tasting, clean tasting products that are still 300 times sweeter and give you that healthy opportunity to either reduce or completely eliminate sugar in a food product.
And then we work, from a texturizing standpoint to build back the mouthfeel that's lost when sugar is replaced. And we call that build back texture, functional build back. And that's really just a great opportunity where we're doing good for society and doing good for one's health. In addition, we've developed a technology where we ferment sugar, actually ferment sugar to turn it into a Stevia product. And that is a much more sustainable process by which we can very efficiently produce a great tasting alternative to table sugar, 300 times sweeter, but doing it in a very, very sustainable reduced environmental footprint way. And so that's just another exciting example of our technology toolbox. We call the three products, Stevia leaf extract, bioconverted, which is the enzymatic conversion, and then the fermented as the perfectly sweet trifecta that we have for Stevia.
Lance Glinn:
Alongside sugar reduction, gluten-free and dairy-free have also been two trends that have seen an increase. It was Harvard Health that reported in April 2022, that almost 20 to 30% of the US population follows these diets, whether they have celiac disease or whether they're lactose intolerant or whether they just think it's better for their own health and makes them feel better. So how is Ingredion embracing this trend or how is your company adjusting to make sure that you meet the needs of those who have celiac or lactose intolerance or just don't want to eat gluten or dairy?
Jim Zallie:
No, great question. And I think it starts with the fact that we are a plant-based company. So as it relates to the drivers for gluten-free, you talked about celiac disease, irritable bowel syndrome, and when you are replacing wheat gluten, which is the allergen in that particular case, the way you need to do that, is to replace it with something that's going to impart the functionality but does not have any inherent gluten. Rice does not have any inherent gluten, potato does not, tapioca does not. Well, we're basic in all three of those. And then there's other ingredients that you can add as well that will help with dough conditioning for a baked good as well as ingredients that are going to help with the overall cell structure for a very great texture, but still be a gluten-free product. So the offerings that we have in rice, potato, tapioca and our knowledge of formulating really make us a great partner for gluten-free.
On dairy-free, the concerns are either mindful consumption when it comes to just avoiding dairy and the animal nature associated with it to be dairy-free. There's concerns about inflammation with some dairy-based products as well. And we have products that can replace nonfat skim milk, that can replace the casein and cheese or coffee creamers for example. And so we basically, through our understanding of food science and technology and the plant-based offerings know how to reverse engineer the functionality that's inherent in a animal-based or dairy-based product. So that's how we're targeting the opportunities to develop offerings for both dairy-free as well as gluten-free.
Lance Glinn:
So plant-based?
Jim Zallie:
Plant-based.
Lance Glinn:
Vegetarian-
Jim Zallie:
Plant-based.
Lance Glinn:
... vegan. So how is Ingredion now attacking this growing trend of veganism, vegetarianism that like lactose intolerance, like gluten-free is really taking over the country?
Jim Zallie:
Well, I think alternative meats that you raised was a category that grew quite quickly, but then hit the realities of the run-up in food costs associated with food inflation that we've all experienced over the last three to four years. And so that's one of the things that has created a challenge for the continued penetration of the alternative meat category along with the labeling. So those products, also the first-generation type products were impacted negatively by the labels that were either high in saturated fats or did not necessarily, were not perceived by consumers as having a clean label. And so we're working with those customers to clean up the labels and provide the functionality that's needed to give the moistness, the succulents, the chew, the bite of those products through our alternative plant-based proteins.
And our particular case, it's a pea protein isolate or it's a lentil-based product, or some of our starch-based products, again, to bind moisture and provide, again, the bite or the chew or the elasticity that you are familiar with when you bite into a regular meat-type product. But the beauty of our product lines is, they're very, very diverse. They're multifunctional and they provide unique attributes that help support vegetarian products, vegan-type offerings, and what we call, the whole category of free-from. So free from, so you mentioned gluten-free, dairy-free, fat-free, sugar-free, our ingredients play a role in all of those. And that's what makes us so relevant, and so I think appreciated by our customers or seen differently certainly than we were seen five to seven years ago.
Lance Glinn:
We started our conversation here in Bridgewater, New Jersey, talking about texture, obviously Ingredion's first Texture Innovation Day, but as you, the company leadership convene and you look ahead to 2025 and the years beyond, how are you plotting out and mapping the future of Ingredion and all of these trends that may continue and new trends that may come along?
Jim Zallie:
We're very, very mindful and plugged into all of the trends, and we're also very clear on what our strategy is. We went through an enterprise-wide strategy refresh last year. We have our winning aspiration, which again, is to be the go-to provider for texture and healthful solutions that make healthy taste better. And we're basically focused on executing that strategy and are looking at other ingredients that would fit within our portfolio, that would expand our toolbox, our capabilities to deliver on the value propositions inherent in that winning aspiration. So we're a company that, again, has innovation at its core and a company that strives to be preferred, as I mentioned, and with an eye on the customer.
I have an expression that I'm known for in the company that, "All growth starts with the customer." And so we have to make sure that we are a customer-focused organization, but are also very aware of where the consumer is going. And as you talked about, the consumer is a very fickle consumer, and you need to be wired into these trends and be able to pivot to these, what we call, pockets of growth that are always emerging in our industry. And it's one of the beauties of the food industry, people do always have to eat, and it's one of the basic pleasures in life. And we get to play an important role in that, and we relish that opportunity.
Lance Glinn:
Yeah. The food and ingredients' industry certainly is not going anywhere anytime soon. Thank you very much for welcoming us here in Bridgewater, New Jersey.
Jim Zallie:
Thank you very much.
Lance Glinn:
And for allowing us to speak with you on the company's first Texture Innovation Day. And thank you so much for joining us Inside the ICE House.
Jim Zallie:
It's been my pleasure.
Speaker 1:
That's our conversation for this week. Remember to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen and follow us on X, at ICE House Podcast. From the New York Stock Exchange, we'll talk to you again next week, Inside the ICE House. Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties expressed or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information, and do not sponsor, approve or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the preceding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.
