00:05This is Romares at the IFT in Chicago, and I'm here with Jason Gorgone from Ashland.

00:09And Jason, you really recently really got into the aloe space.

00:14So why is now such a good time and what, what are you doing within the space?

00:17We recently acquired a company called Pharmachem Laboratories, which was a, , a grower and supplier of aloe vera in Mexico.

00:26We have 3 farms, and, we think it's a great time to get into the aloe vera market because of, recent product launches from Coca-Cola.

00:35And acquisitions like that and just a growing trends of aloe, recently we, we thought it was a good time to get into the market.

00:44What type of applications might you be looking for then, I guess the beverage spaces, beverages, we can do personal care applications.

00:52We also do some powdered versions so we can do powder formulations as.

00:59What are some of the other things then that you're presenting here at this year's event?

01:02We also do probiotics.

01:04So, part of Ashland's new future is to be a, ingredient supplier for functional ingredients and also to be able to, incorporate our formulation expertise.

01:19So two of the ingredients that we're highlighting for formulations is our aloe vera, which is a turnkey formula.

01:26Drink such as this, and we also have a probiotic stick pack which is a, turnkey formula incorporating our five strain probiotic blends, through Probiotico, which is a company that we have exclusive distributor with, and they're out of Italy.

01:43Yeah, it's a big, big trend I guess within the digestive health space here in here in the US.

01:49More recently, you know, we got into probiotics probably about 6 years ago, and, you know, we're, we're part of our probiotic value proposition is that we're able to offer functional probiotics, so category specific probiotics that will help.

02:08Immune health or digestive health or sports health, which is muscle recovery and things like that.

02:15So we're really focusing on that niche market of category specific probiotics.

02:20Certainly something to watch out for.

02:21Thank you very much, Jason.