DuPont Nutrition & Biosciences: US$6.2 billion combination promises “faster and focused innovation”

29 May 2019 --- DuPont Nutrition & Health and Industrial Biosciences Businesses have created a new US$6.2 billion business division, coined Nutrition & Biosciences (N&B). Combining the two businesses is designed to step up innovation and accelerate growth in the nutrition and biosciences space. It creates a large-scale global market leader across the specialty food ingredients, dietary supplements, pharma excipients, household and personal care and animal nutrition sectors.

“Bringing the businesses together to one will enable us to work faster and with more power on innovations that matter,” Matthias Heinzel, DuPont Nutrition & Biosciences President, tells NutritionInsight. “The two businesses have complementary skills and expertise which are already often used together to develop new products.”

Heinzel explains how DuPont N&B is already an “innovation leader” across a variety of active markets. Going forward it will be able to further leverage the skillset and capabilities from across the new business to bring innovative products to market faster and with more scale.

“Nutrition & Health and Industrial Biosciences have a strong history of working closely together. A significant part of our innovation and technology is complementary and expertise and capabilities from both businesses often go into new a new product solution,” he adds. 

Also, the businesses serve highly complementary end markets and combining them will enable the company to further accelerate innovation and growth, for example, within food enzymes, probiotics and human and animal microbiome science.

“Moreover, we will strengthen our go-to-market offer with a more targeted approach presenting the breadth of the new business,” Heinzel adds. “One of the key advantages of Nutrition & Biosciences is our ability to develop new solutions directly with our customers meeting their specific needs.” 

These solutions typically contain a broad selection of products from across the combined portfolio. “For example in food solutions, we often use food enzymes together with other ingredients to ensure freshness, taste, and texture. In the combined business, we will be able to work even closer together to create new solutions for customers and further drive innovation,” he continues.

Microbiome knowledge boost
Combining knowledge across both the animal and human microbiome will unlock new benefits for customers, he says, and through its Human Microbiome Venture, the business aims to develop new microbiome solutions by combining microbes and molecules – dubbed the “next-generation probiotics, prebiotics and postbiotics” with diagnostic and digital solutions with a focus on mother/infant, gut, metabolic and brain. 

“The Microbiome Venture is driving microbiome solution development through partnering with world-class research organizations and highly innovative start-ups,” Heinzel explains. 

Partnerships include strategic collaborations with the APC Microbiome Institute in Ireland and the TFTAK Centre for Food & Fermentation Technology in Estonia and with INRA (French National Institute for Agricultural Research), through both the Micalis Institute and MetaGenoPolis in France. 

“This is just the beginning,” Heinzel stresses.

DuPont Nutrition & Biosciences will serve customers through three market-driven platforms: Food & Beverage, Health & Bioscience and Pharma Solutions. The business platforms will have a distinct positioning in the market that will enhance market visibility, insights, customer intimacy and drive overall business growth, notes Heinzel.

The new Nutrition & Biosciences business will be headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, and led by Heinzel. After combining, the new Nutrition & Biosciences business reported 2018 revenue of US$6.2 billion, with more than 10,000 employees, 70 manufacturing sites and 25 innovation centers across the globe. 

Dow Chemical Co. and DuPont Co. completed their $130 billion merger in August 2017. The so-called merger of equals, brought together two chemical industry giants to form a new company named DowDuPont. The combined entity has been operating as a holding company under the name “DowDuPont” with three divisions – Agriculture, Materials Science and Specialty Products. 

By Gaynor Selby