Vitafoods Europe 2026: Gelita unveils bioactive collagen peptide for skin health
27 May 2026 | Gelita
Gelita presented a new bioactive collagen peptide (BCP) solution at Vitafoods Europe 2026, Curaderm. Martin Walter, category manager Healthy Aging and Sports Nutrition, told us it was developed to support skin and gum health. He highlighted the solution’s “great effects” in reducing red spots and medication for people with topical dermatitis. Walter also observed growing interest in collagen for sports, recovery, and healthy aging, where its BCPs PeptEndure and BodyBalance offer support.
This is Yolanda Van Hal Nutrition Insight.
I'm here with Martin Walter from Ylita at Vita Foods 2026.
Thank you for joining me today.
Hello, Yolanda.
It's nice to have this interview with you today.
So really pleased to give you some insights about what we are doing here at at Fellita at Vita Foods.
I'm really curious because I know you're debuting a new ingredient here at Vita Foods called Cura.
Yeah, yeah, we do.
And I'd love to hear more about how it fits within Julita's broader focus on beauty, healthy aging, and all these different elements.
Yeah, so our, our focus here is the launch of a new ingredient which is called Curoderm, and it's actually the serious side of skincare.
So we're looking into skin barrier function and that is relevant for, let's say if you have acute wounds or if you have.
Chronic wounds and, offering you a roof healing process, and it also covers aspects as for example, gum health in your mouth and also looking at diseases like atopical dermatitis.
They've seen great effects in reducing the medication but also reducing the, the red spots that you have usually on your skin.
And it's a huge burden for the population suffering from this disease.
And so this is really going into a more serious, part of looking into skin care.
Not the beauty, which we have our flagship brand Barrisol, at a 2.5 g dose.
This is now going with a 5 g to 10 g dose into, let's say more barrier function related, benefits.
And no, no, as you already mentioned varisil, I know that you have many different types of bioactive collagen peptides also on display here at the show.
Can you explain how those support recovery and repair for athletes or the active nutrition space and what makes them effective in maintaining musculoskeletal health?
Oh, very good question.
So what we actually see is collagen is very much known for beauty benefits and Ori sees an increasing interest in.
Collon for sportive activity related topics.
And there's recovery is one of them, which is quite important.
As you know, there's about 50% of all injuries that happen in sports are related to connective tissue.
And that is a huge topic, not only for the elite athletes, for them, big money is involved, and that is, that is a huge thing, but also for those who want to train safely, start doing exercise.
Also the aging athlete, which is one of our boost topics here as.
For them, connective tissue is, is very important in supporting it, staying injury-free, and, and that is where Shalita has developed great solutions with tend for supporting ligaments and tendons, but we also look into supporting muscle overall health.
So looking at this entire muscle skeletal system, and there's great science out, a lot of research and peer.
Peer, , yeah, peer reviewed journals, and yeah, so that that is something which is from a market perspective now, a trend for the future.
OK, awesome.
And as you already mentioned, there are aging athletes and there's a lot of growing interest in recovery solutions.
So, I'm just curious, how do products like Gillita, Peps, Eure and Body Balance support this this demographic specifically and how do they support performance driven recovery?
Yeah, so looking specifically at the aging population, what we are doing is here not necessarily looking at increasing, adding more years to their life, but really improving quality of life and quality of life for this aging population is very much related to the muscle.
So, and, and the connective tissue surrounding the muscle.
And as, as a young person, you probably have like 90% muscle.
If you look into your forearm, muscle, 90% muscle, and they're surrounded by fat, and this shifts drastically as you're aging.
Probably you will have only 50% of your muscle remaining, and there's a lot of fat muscle surrounding it.
And this shift can lead to a disease called sarcopeia, which is affecting your muscle strength, your overall ability to.
Participate in life, and that's one of the main aspirations of people that are aging.
They want to take part in life.
They want to live a higher quality of life.
This is exactly where Shalita bioactive contrapeptides kick in, supporting those people to live a healthier life for longer.
And that is our aspiration and that's what we see.
Outcome of our clinical research, but also feedback we get from consumers while we are actually this is helping me to participate in life and this is helping me to pray with my grandchildren.
This is helping me to play table tennis in my table tennis group, and all this is happening because of the bioactive collagen peptides.
Awesome, really interesting.
You already mentioned several trends happening within the space, but I'd love to hear more about trends that you see in sports nutrition specifically when we talk about recovery and repair, like you mentioned earlier.
And how you're positioning your products to meet those trends.
Yeah, so that absolutely is a very good question.
So we see several trends in sports tuition, aging athlete is one.
We see trend on active women, so having a focus on women, and women necessarily don't, do not leak on, look into bulking up muscle.
We're looking into leaner body.
Composition and this is where one of our ingredients, body balance, can play a major role, helping them, supporting to shift body composition to, let's say leaner bodies.
For the recovery part, I think that is becoming a key focus and so far, there's not, there are other protein sources, but they are more focusing on growing them.
Collagen is quite rich in quick organic amino acids playing a role in the recovery phase, but there are also, peptide signal pathways that we can trigger to speed up recovery.
And we have a network of athletes that we're working with, like 40 to 50, where we see this great recovery and especially preparing for your next competition.
You will get great benefits of taking collagen peptides.
I would describe them as a training partner, helping you every day to improve your performance and get to a point where you can in your next race, be faster than before and achieve better results.
OK, really interesting.
And finally, I always love to get some insights into the future, which you can already tell me.
Because I know that demand for collagen solutions is still growing, and I'm curious, how do you foresee the market evolving over the next few years and what role is Julita playing in that innovation?
No, thank you for your questions.
What we see now in the sports area, we see this shift that people in the, in the past it was joints and bones.
Now we're talking about recovery already, but there are more, more, there's more to come.
We are looking into cellular level, what is happening there.
Longevity is a big topic, of course.
Collagen has an has, has something, has a meaningful.
Part in that, in that field as.
So that, that is a big topic.
Health span as such, looking at inter benefits that we, we're doing some research looking at mitochondrial health, which is part of the future innovation pipeline of Solita.
And that, that is quite what we see in that space.
