The nutritional raw materials & ingredient supply space isn’t a Birkenstocks and hacky-sacs crowd. At Natural Products Expo West, you simply have to walk down to SupplyExpo in Hall A to experience the difference first-hand. And while the Natural Products Expo side of the show is more popular, the real innovation happens at SupplyExpo.

The business of nutritional raw material & ingredient supply is a lesser-researched part of the nutrition industry value chain. We’ve made it our specialty to shine light on this part of the nutrition industry and try to make sense of the global supply landscape as it pertains to the U.S. market for nutrition products.

High transportation costs, a weakening dollar and a weak economy all conspired to challenge ingredient suppliers in 2007 and into 2008. Mother nature didn’t hold back either. Suppliers of herbs and botanicals were also impacted by droughts, flooding and other server weather across the world.

As with challenges, opportunities for nutritional raw material and ingredient supply companies were fairly universal, according to executives in the nutrition industry’s supply chain.

Regulatory stabilization, geographical diversification and the implementation of GMPs are all on executives minds in 2008 and covered in detail in NBJ’s latest market research report.

All of this and more is covered in NBJ’s Nutritional Raw Materials & Ingredient Supply Report…one of the few places you’ll be able to find a broad and deep analysis of the nutrition industry’s value chain.

-Patrick

At the NBJ Summit this week, we’ll be hosting a panel on “greening” the nutrition industry. Below are a few articles I found on Brandweek.com that caught my attention. They represent a solid balance of perspectives on this challenging, and very new issue for executives. The jury is still out on the longevity of “greening”, but I hope to have some solid suggestions on what to do and what not to do following the NBJ Summit.

-Patrick

Study: ‘Green’ Products Leave Consumers Puzzled

“The good news is consumers are “going green.” But the bad news is they are still pretty green when it comes to understanding what the term really means.

“Here’s the big ah-ha!,” said Suzanne Shelton, CEO of Shelton Group, a Knoxville, Tenn.-based ad agency that specializes in energy efficiency and sustainability. “If you were an alien and you landed on the planet in April of this year, you would think that the ‘green’ market was pretty mature because you’d be hearing about it everywhere—every newspaper, every TV show you turn on somebody is talking about being green. But this is not a mature market.”

Shelton Group recently conducted a national study, called Eco Pulse, which asked consumers open-ended and multiple-choice questions about green issues. What it found was a whole lot of confusion.”

Do Consumers Care that Sun Chips are Solar Powered? Apparently

“It’s getting harder to find a brand that doesn’t claim to be green. But, do they have a solar power factory? Is the rest of their energy use offset by energy credits? And, are they rebuilding a town that was virtually wiped out by a tornado? Not likely.

Sun Chips is different. The Frito-Lay product has rooted its brand in environmental causes as well as health-forward thinking. This strategy has paid off handsomely as Sun Chip sales are up 17.6%, totaling $201.8 million for the 52 weeks ending June 15, per IRI.

Frito-Lay vp-marketing Gannon Jones talked to Brandweek news editor Kenneth Hein about why really being green is healthy for sales.”

Forget the Environment Say the ‘Never Greens’

“About 10% of the population are Never Greens, according to a survey by Mintel International in Chicago, a research firm.

The Never Greens don’t buy green products, don’t remember green advertising when they see it and are irritated by it even if they do.”