How a key ingredient in Coca-Cola, M&M’s is smuggled from war-torn Sudan

Gum arabic, a vital ingredient used in everything from Coca-Cola to M&M’s sweets, is increasingly being trafficked from rebel-held areas of war-torn Sudan, traders and industry sources say, complicating Western companies’ efforts to insulate their supply chains from the conflict.

Sudan produces around 80% of the world’s gum arabic, a natural substance harvested from acacia trees that’s widely used to mix, stabilize and thicken ingredients in mass-market products including L’Oreal lipsticks and Nestle petfood.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), at war since April 2023 with Sudan’s national army, seized control late last year of the main gum-harvesting regions of Kordofan and Darfur in western Sudan.

Since then the raw product, which can only be marketed by Sudanese traders in return for a fee to the RSF, is making its way to Sudan’s neighbors without proper certification, according to conversations with eight producers and buyers who are directly involved in gum arabic trading or based in Sudan.

The gum is also exported through informal border markets, two traders told Reuters.

Asked for comment, a RSF representative said that the force had protected the gum arabic trade and only collected small fees, adding that talk of any lawbreaking was propaganda against the paramilitary group.

Last month, the RSF signed a charter with allied groups establishing a parallel government in the parts of Sudan it controls.