CHICAGO — As a company currently in year seven of its journey in nutrition, ADM is well positioned from an advantage perspective, said Vincent F. Macciocchi, chief sales and marketing officer and president of nutrition at ADM.

“We’ve experienced a lot of things already in terms of putting pieces together, doing M&A, investing and building facilities,” Mr. Macciocchi said during a June 7 presentation at the virtual Deutsche Bank dbAccess Global Consumer Conference. “We’ve come through that and we’re growing.”

Mr. Macciocchi said ADM’s advantages start with the breadth and depth of its pantry and the types of ingredients it offers. The company’s ability to play across flavors and colors, naturals, alternative proteins and specialty oils also is key.

More specifically, though, the company’s advantage comes in a couple of areas, he said.

“Our ability to prototype in a virtual environment or a live environment with a focus on speed and speed to market,” he said. “Think about going from concept to market in 20 weeks and getting product on shelf for our customers. And I think it’s really how do you want to use us provides a differentiated value. But we can sell single ingredients all day long, and we can be a single ingredient supplier. Where we really are differentiated is in our systems DNA. And when we talk about systems, we’re not talking about blending one or two ingredients. We’re talking about full product development, proper order of addition with the right products that interact and these are systems backed by science, okay? So you can use this again as an individual ingredient supplier, as a systems developer or you can use us as a full turnkey product developer. We actually developed the entire formulation, the entire product, provide a full manufacturing environment and actually developed the full product concept.”

Mr. Macciocchi said ADM’s customers have the flexibility to choose how to use the company. The company’s breadth and depth of its pantry coupled with technical capabilities provide “a unique value proposition,” he said.

“And then you look at how this all ties into the current trends in the marketplace when you think about holistic health and you think about the pandemic, which we’ve all endured for the last year, plus,” he said. “And you think about the focus on gut health. You think about people wanting food before medicine and really their overall health. Our pantry fits very nicely.”

In terms of health and wellness, ADM’s advantage shines through in its ability to build products, not just provide supplements, Mr. Macciocchi said.

“It’s again, building products and building systems and building fortified beverages, fortifying bars, for example,” he said. “You think about lifestyle diets and alternative proteins and keto, for example. You think about plant-based meat alternatives, and we’re a leading player in that space. Again, it’s about building the product. We’ve been in plant-based meat alternatives … for 40 years, but the products have come a long way. And again, it’s due to the ability to build the entire product.”