Our Story
Biosun Biochemicals, Inc. was founded in 1996, by Mark Messersmith, a former Quest International technical sales, product and business development manager. Quest was a global flavor and food ingredient house, and their ‘total solutions approach’ to the food industry offered a variety of products from one source, which included flavors, natural colors, enzymes, cultures, emulsifiers, proteins, lactose and other food ingredients. When Mr. Messersmith was given the opportunity to become a distributor for Quest’s smaller customer ‘tail’, his mission was to offer a similar, diversified line of products but with a heightened level of customer service that provided technical, physical and supply-chain solutions usually lacking from mega-corporations when servicing smaller-sized and special needs customers.
Biosun, which later adapted the food industry-friendly name Biosun Flavors & Food Ingredients (or Biosun FFI), prospered as a Quest partner, becoming Quest’s exclusive U.S. distributor for the beverage industry in 2004, and cultivated valuable customer relationships for over a decade. During this time, an evolution occurred as Quest divested most of their line of food ingredient products in order to focus on flavors. Biosun quickly saw this as an opportunity to become a manufacturer of some of these rationalized ingredients, in addition to being Quest’s flavor distributor.
In 2007, Givaudan, now the largest flavor house in the world, purchased Quest International (then owned by ICI Corp.), and our reputation and capabilities soon awarded us the position as Givaudan’s primary U.S. distributor for compounded flavors in the beverage, sweet and dairy industries only one year following the acquisition.
Today, after many years of adaptation to changing market strategies and a strong commitment to the formation of key global processing partnerships, Biosun FFI has emerged as a multifaceted distributor, blender, and basic manufacturer in the food industry. In addition to our world-class flavor line, our product offering includes processing enzymes, natural and artificial colors, fruit powders, autolyzed yeast extracts, emulsifiers and other select food ingredients to satisfy the specialized needs of our customers.
Biosun’s corporate facility is located in Tampa, Florida, near excellent seaport and airport accesses, and houses our main offices, air-conditioned warehouses, extensive refrigerated storage, liquid blending facilities, analytical laboratories and our dedicated staff of food technologists, warehouse personnel and food industry managers waiting to serve our valued customers.