By Jessica DiNapoli
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Kellogg Co, which makes Pop Tarts, sources a key food binding ingredient, gum arabic, from Sudan, now engulfed in a third week of violent conflict, CEO Steve Cahillane told Reuters in an interview on Thursday.
The Eggo waffle manufacturer, however, does not see any risk of its “safety stock” of the ingredient becoming depleted, even as the fighting rages on, Cahillane said.
Reuters reported last week that the battles between Sudan’s army and a paramilitary force halted trade of gum arabic but that many candy, food and soft drink makers such as PepsiCo Inc stockpile months of supply because of political instability in the region.
“We work with suppliers that source from Sudan and other locations in the ‘gum belt’ of Africa,” Cahillane said, adding that the cereal-maker looks for “redundancy of supply,” or back-ups, for the ingredient.
“We have inventory builds and different locations and different routes to extract ingredients when ports might be closed and routes might be unsafe.”
Kellogg’s frosted confetti cupcake Pop Tarts use gum arabic, as does its Morningstar Farms spicy black bean veggie burgers. Bear Naked chewy peanut butter and honey granola bites, also made by Kellogg, list acacia gum, another name for gum arabic, in their ingredients lists.
Africa’s gum belt stretches from Somalia to Nigeria, although the quality of the ingredient differs by region. The preferred ingredient is only found in acacia trees in Sudan, South Sudan and Chad.
“It has not been brought to my attention that we have an out-of-stock situation looming,” Cahillane said.
(Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli in New York City; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
