Our History
Guilin GFS Monk Fruit Corp. (Monk Fruit Corp.) was founded in 2004 by Fusheng (Frank) Lan as a Sino-Foreign Equity Joint Venture, with its joint venture partner BioVittoria Ltd from New Zealand. Monk Fruit Corp was from the beginning focussed on the development of a world-class monk fruit supply chain for producing high-quality ingredients for the food and beverage industry. Building on the know-how and technology developed by Mr Lan and his agronomy team for monk fruit seedling propagation and orchard management, the company soon established itself as the industry leader, introducing the first commercial supply of tissue cultured monk fruit seedlings and the first minimum price contracts with growers to ensure stability of supply and risk sharing with the growers.
The next significant milestone for Monk Fruit Corp was attaining Self-Affirmed GRAS status in the US for its monk fruit extract as a natural sweetener in foods and beverages. With this regulatory approval in place, Monk Fruit Corp could begin to sell monk fruit extract into the US for use as a sweetener in foods and beverages, although mainstream acceptance of this ingredient would have to wait until 2010 when the FDA review was completed.
There were two key events in 2010 that would underpin the future growth of the company. The first milestone was the FDA approval in January 2010 of monk fruit for use as a sweetener in the US. With this regulatory approval in place large food and beverage companies could now consider using monk fruit extract as a sweetener in food and beverage products. With this milestone in place Monk Fruit Corp began discussions with a number of large food ingredient companies, eventually partnering with Tate & Lyle in an exclusive partnership which Monk Fruit Corp and Tate & Lyle entered into in October 2010 and which is still in place today. Tate & Lyle is one of the world’s largest food ingredient companies, and this agreement was critical in gaining industry acceptance from the largest food and beverage companies for monk fruit.
The period 2010 to 2014 saw a rapid increase in demand for monk fruit products, particularly in the US market. To support this growth Monk Fruit Corp significantly increased both raw material and processing capacity, acquired seedling manufacturer Guilin Bio-DaDi. Co. Ltd, acquired the assets and business of BioVittoria Ltd, and established overseas subsidiaries in the US and New Zealand.
Today Monk Fruit Corp is the only company in the world with a fully integrated supply chain and in-house expertise spanning monk fruit genetic resources, superior plant varieties, seedling cultivation technology and capability, farmer training, orchard technology research and development, monk fruit processing and selling and marketing of monk fruit ingredients.
For more than two decades Monk Fruit Corp has been the world’s leading monk fruit company. During this time Monk Fruit Corp has been at the forefront of the development of the monk fruit industry and has been responsible for introducing many significant innovations in agronomy and processing. As a result of Monk Fruit Corp’s innovation and leadership monk fruit is now a recognised main-stream ingredient and features in products from most of the world’s largest food and beverage companies.
Monk Fruit Corp is the world’s leading monk fruit company – a title which it has earned from more than a decade dedicated to innovation, focus and leadership in the monk fruit industry.