Orion challenges Lotte

According to local press reports, South Korea’s second-largest snack maker Orion is challenging Lotte Confectionary in the country’s chewing gum sector.

Orion has recently launched a new gum product called Natural Chicle, a gum made out of chicle latex from the Mexican sapodilla trees. This was done in a move to recover the share in the gum market it lost to Lotte’s xylitol sweetener gum from Finnish birch trees. Since releasing its first products of xylitol gum in 2000, Lotte has beat the competition grabbing a 70% share of the xylitol gum market.