Maïzly: the Worlds’ FIRST non-GMO Corn-Based Milk Alternative.

I've got a co-founding partner, Marcel. He approached me in the middle of 2019 with the idea of a corn milk. His thoughts were that, with the rise of oat milk and prior to that almond milk, why was there no corn milk, corn being the most abundant crop in the World. I thought that was a great idea. At that time, I was running a company in Kansas City, which I was commuting for. A 40-hour door-to-door commute! So, when COVID hit I could no longer commute to Kansas City so I resigned, which gave us the opportunity to go ALL IN on making the idea a reality.

Did you have previous CPG experience?

Marcel's background was in the food industry. He had been at Auburn University, but shortly after he qualified, he saw the rise of frozen yogurt in the US. He decided to return to South Africa with that idea and he started a frozen yoghurt company, Marcels, which became a household brand in South Africa. He sold that business about 15 years ago but he maintained his passion for food.

From my side, I come from a private equity and investment banking background. But in the private equity space, we had several investments in the CPG space. It was an area where I loved to get deeply involved. In my private capacity, together with a Swiss food scientist and Swiss entrepreneur, we built, from a business plan, the only manufacturing plant in West Africa that could produce European quality mayonnaise, salad cream and ketch-up. The plant was in Ghana and we ended up selling out to a strategic buyer.

What separates you from your competition?

We feel we've got the next generation of plant-based milk. One of the most important characteristics that we wanted for our milk was that it had a complimentary taste profile, so it wouldn't change the taste of your tea, coffee or cereal, unlike oat or almond milk. We wanted the coffee or cereal to shine! We believe we have managed to achieve this. It also has the opacity and the mouth feel of a dairy milk as well.

The other thing we wanted was one SKU that did it all. We didn't want to have a separate barista version. We managed to achieve this goal. Our product actually froths with micro bubbles, it's exactly like a dairy froth. It is very good for doing barista art, and it also turns tea and coffee white. It's excellent for baking with and for cooking with. It's an incredibly versatile product and really is a proper alternative to a dairy milk because it does everything a dairy milk can do.

From a nutritional perspective, we wanted to bring a healthy version of a plant-based milk to the market. The part of the corn that we use is the corn fiber. Corn fiber is one of the best forms of fiber you can consume. It goes further and lasts longer in the gut, feeding the good bacteria. In the US, some statistics show that less than 5% of the population have the daily minimum requirements of fiber. We've got 8 grams of fiber per serving, an excellent source of fiber claim. Then we use coconut oil. We didn't use seed, nut, or vegetable oils, which most other plant-based milks use. Seed, nut, and Vegetable oils contain Omega 6, which causes inflammation, which opens the door to cancers. Coconut oil is one of three plant-based oils that are considered very healthy for you. The other is olive oil and then avocado oil. Coconut oil is very good for your complexion, it's very good for your hair and teeth.

We add chickpea for the protein content. Chickpea has all but one of the amino acid chains, the most of any plant-based protein. It is also the most easily and efficiently absorbed of the plant-based proteins. So, although we've got the same amount of protein as the oat milks and almond milks, it's much more efficiently absorbed.

We then fortify with vitamins A, D, E and calcium. We've got an excellent source of vitamins A, D and E and a good source of calcium.

We've got one quarter of the sugar of dairy milk, and we use cane sugar, so we don't use any sugar substitutes.

Our products are allergen, gluten free and dairy free. Our tag line is Maizly for All, everyone can enjoy Maizly products.

All our ingredients are non-GMO. One of the negatives of corn is there's a high association with it being a GM crop, but we only use non-GMO ingredients and corn.

We believe we've got a very competitive product, it's nutritious, fully functional, and has a great taste profile. But also from a sustainability perspective, corn uses the least amount of land and water per ton of produce compared to any other crop. It's extremely land and water efficient. Also being the most abundant crop, it means we can produce close to our markets, reducing food miles. So, our sustainability story is a strong one.

What have been the biggest challenges?

It's been a long and winding road. When we started developing the product, we didn't realize just how difficult it would be. It took us around four years and over 120 iterations to get to where we are today with the product. Now, we are very happy with it. There's a lot of trial and error! We were uncompromising in our objectives, we really wanted to achieve what we have now. That took a lot of dedication and a lot of pain.

It has also been a little difficult that were based in South Africa. We battled to find partners in South Africa who would work with us to help commercialize the product and make sure that what we did in the lab also work at an industrial scale. We ended up working with one of the companies I had sat on the board of in Zimbabwe, during my Private Equity days. I knew the management team well and they agreed that we could work with them. We started selling our products in October 2021 into the Zimbabwean market, which was fantastic because we were able to tweak the product and get market feedback and then make further tweaks. It gave us a non-judgmental market to do that. That was very helpful. The challenge with the Zimbabwe economy, was getting paid. Although we would be selling a lot of product, we would never know when we would actually get paid because the government has to release the funds when it's an overseas payment and they prioritize other urgent payments. That became very difficult for us. We decided towards the end of 2022 to pivot the business.

From the beginning we didn't have intentions to be a player in the African market. We really did want to get into the more developed world. But that really forced us into making the pivot sooner. We decided that although we wanted to get our products into the US market, we felt that the story that we had wasn't strong enough. We identified Central America as a better launch pad for us. After doing some research we recognized that Costa Rica, although a small market, would be fantastic for achieving our objectives. Our reasoning was that in Central America, corn is very much part of the diet. It has a positive connotation. Costa Rica also has a very high milk consumption per capita ratio. And then it's a very environmentally conscious country, 100% of their energy is renewable energy, so our sustainability story would resonate.

We found a copacker in Nicaragua and a licensee in Costa Rica who was distributing vegan products. It took us some time to get going, but we started selling in Costa Rica at the beginning of 2024. That was the start of our proof of concepts for the US market. We then found a co-packer in the Dominican Republic that was FDA approved. The reason we decided to use them was because all the co-packers in the US that we approached had these very big minimum volumes requirements. The problem with the Dominican Republic co-packer though was that everything went great when you were physically there, but when you left, it was difficult to make meaningful progress. It got a little bit frustrating. We missed our deadline we had set ourselves to launch in the US, so we pivoted yet again, and found a co-pack in Toronto. At the beginning of December 2024, we ran our first production for the US from our Toronto based co-packer, and the product was shipped to our warehouse Pennsylvania. We went on shelf at the end of January this year.

Goals for upcoming year + Next phase of the company?

For the U.S. market, our strategy has been to start in the northeast. We started by launching into 97 independents in Brooklyn and Manhattan. We identified a sales broker who was very strong on the east coast from the north to the south and they have been helping us get in front of key retailers, where we now have listings with Wakefern (Shope Rite), Allegiance, Food Bazaar and Morton Williams, and have our vendor numbers with the two giant distributors, UNFI and KeHE.

The reason we wanted to focus on one area initially was so that we could also focus our social media and influencer strategy. Corn has a negative connotation thanks to corn syrup, and corn is also known as a genetically modified crop, so it’s important we educate the consumer about our corner stone ingredient being corn fiber, which is extremely healthy, and that we only use non-GMO ingredients. It’s easier and more affordable to get this message out to a targeted audience. We did, however, have an extremely successful Expo West experience in March and that's driven a lot of opportunities our way so it may be a little tougher remaining focused around the northeast for long. We have got interest now in Northern California as well as Texas and New Mexico.

But one of the things that our product really excels at is in coffee. The frothing is extremely, extremely good. You can do all the barista art that you do with normal dairy milk. It really does bring out the coffee flavor in the coffee. We see that as a fantastic market for us, so we are looking to expand our reach into the coffee shop market. We're looking at doing collaborations with coffee shops in New York. We are going to be at the specialty coffee expo in New York in a few weeks’ time. It's obviously not an easy market to crack given that you need the consumer to ask for a Maizly cappuccino. To get to that stage will require a big marketing effort, but once we get in and the word gets out, I think we'll make a good showing of it.

What aspect of entrepreneurship do you appreciate the most?

The sense of achievement of creating something is quite profound. You get this amazing sense of achievement as you build the business. As you conquer one challenge after the next and you come out the other side it's really rewarding in that regard. Also having the flexibility where you're making big decisions daily. I'm fortunate and I've got a fantastic business partner. We work really well together and we make those key decisions quickly without needing to go through any approval process or committees, it gives us an advantage over our larger competitors. We can move quicker and adapt to the changing circumstances that we are faced with.

It's exciting, it's an exciting journey and we believe we've really got a good product.

What is your why?

Understanding more and more just how big the opportunity is for us, this opportunity seems to be getting larger and larger. That is really motivating us. But there's something else which is very close to our core that we are also working on, which is part of this project. When I was in private equity I had an impact investing angle as well. I spent a lot of time in West, East and Southern Africa and often stayed with locals to understand the challenges that the local people were having and hence where capital allocation could alleviate those challenges. One thing I noticed was that with a lot of the young mothers, their partners or husbands were not around. Those young mothers, they didn't get maternity leave, so they'd have to go straight back to work. And they'd earn enough for the next day's food, so they don't earn enough to buy large tins of infant formula, even if it was available. Then with intermittent power supply, they couldn't leave expressed breast milk in a refrigerator. So the grandmother, who would look after the little baby, would feed that baby a combination of condensed milk, coffee creamer and water, which is a horrific concoction for a developing brain. The first thousand days from conception is when the brain develops the most. The upshot of this diet is stunted growth syndrome. And stunted growth syndrome is not just a stunting of your physical stature, but of your mental cognitive abilities. It’s an irreversible lifelong prison sentence for that person, they'd grow up being uneducable and an unproductive member of the workforce and ultimately a burden on the community. This is very widespread across Africa, some statistics show over 39% of Africans are suffering some degree of stunted growth syndrome, it's a really terrible thing.

What we set out to do is the development of a Codex compliant infant formula. It has all the amino acids, proteins, vitamins, fats etc., necessary for an infant formula.

We use soy protein because Codex allows soy protein as the only plant base protein for an infant formula. We pack it in single serving sachets in a box of 20. That box would go to a corner shop and the corner shop would break the box open and for 20 US cents, that mother can buy the sachets for the infant while she's at work.

That infant no longer will be consuming this terrible concoction. They will be getting a nutritious infant formula. That's obviously a passion project for us, but we see a huge opportunity and have some significant interest. That's a very rewarding part of the job as well. We're actually developing something for the market where there's currently no practical alternative for those people.

Do you have a moment that brings you the most joy?

The moment, the most joy. I think it was when I was in New York maybe a month ago and I walked into one of the independent stores and I saw our product on the shelf. You get this amazing rush, and you think about all that hard work for four years, of trial and error. We eventually got it right and then just to see it in a store, that's an amazing feeling.

Other Markets

We are also launching in the UK. We've had some early adopters in the UK, we've got some fantastic early adopter customers in the UK. We're running our first production for the UK at the end of March.

Piece of Advice

What works for me is, you have to have passion for what you're doing. I'm really passionate about what we're doing here. If you've got that passion for it and the determination to succeed in what you're doing it makes it a lot easier. Although you're working incredible hours, those hours fly by and it doesn't feel like hard work, it just feels like you're enjoying every minute because you're passionate about what you're doing. For me, I think that's what's really the driving force of the energy behind what we're doing.

Community Callout

We are funded by an Australian family office and they have been fantastic investors. In fact, they've backed us from the beginning, not because of the idea, but because they believing in us. They're fantastic, they have been amazing supporters and we wouldn't be here today without them, Daryl Archibald.

I have to call out my three fellow Maizly employees, they continue to go above and beyond!

Marcel, our COO

Amanda Pachecho Fonseca, our VP of Brand and Marketing

Wayne Evans, our CFO

I also have to call out my Wife, Caryn, for her solid unwavering support through all the challenges and set-backs, and allowing me to be away from home for such long extended periods!

In Closing

KLS wants to thank Maïzly and Co-Founder, Tim Leclercq, for today's "Together Talks" feature. Follow along for their journey with their social handles below!

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