Gnosis by Lesaffre unveils future of fermentation-powered health and wellness
25 Jun 2025 | Gnosis by Lesaffre
We caught up with Ulrich Irgens, the general manager at Gnosis by Lesaffre, at the recent Vitafoods Europe 2025 trade show to discuss how the company is pioneering the future of health through fermentation and biotransformation. In this interview, the company shares how its pharma-grade precision meets natural innovation in ingredients like MyCondro, Quatrefolic, and MenaQ7 Matrix, while highlighting the unique power of probiotic yeasts and where fermentation is headed next in joint, gut, and systemic health.
Hello everybody, this is William Bradford Nichols, the editor for Nutrition Insight, and I'm here live at Vita Foods Europe in Barcelona, Spain with Urrich Ergens, the general manager for Nosis Paolo Sofre.
Hello sir, how are you today?
Very good, thanks for stopping by.
Thanks for having us.
I've got some, questions for you, and if it's OK, I'd love to just jump right in.
Absolutely.
All right, , you recently joined Nosis Palo Sore.
What do you sort of bring to the company in terms of leadership and direction?
And what is your strategy for Nis Kent leadership?
I think it's less about me as a leader.
I've, I've I've asked some questions, but I think we as an organization have answered these questions collectively in the last 6 months.
I'm quite proud of where we are heading.
It's not all visible right now, but it will be, I think, over the next 6 to 12 months.
With a focus on culture.
We, I think that looking outside andnosis was clearly a company that was great.
In execution, in servicing customers, great in manufacturing, extremely high quality standards, strong product portfolio, maybe a little weaker in innovation, a little weaker in strategic vision and clear direction of where we were heading, and we've answered some of those questions in part by making small shift in culture to allow us to drive innovation differently, be a bit more creative and profitable minded, and in part in strategy, which was the second around.
Lifting the standards of human health, which is not a naive ambition, but it's more commitment of participating in an industry rather than actually helping to lift an industry rather than just participating.
So it says more about our ambition, but we hope we can create some impact and and come with novel solutions to some of the bigger pressing needs when we talk about health, and that's really what's in the strategy.
We look forward to sharing it with everyone in the next 6 months.
A small shift, it's not a revolution, but it's, it's a nice trajectory.
Oh, very interesting.
Can you sort of talk to us a little bit about Gnosis' biotic range and how it stands out in the industry where biotics kind of represent a considerable portion of the market now?
Sure, so the legacy of Gnosis is obviously being a part of the Lessat Group.
It has a 170 year history in the yeast and therefore all probiotic rates.
I also more yeast than in traditional probiotics being bacteria, and so we got grains of probiotics based on yeast from nutritional yeast, vitamin enriched yeasts to unique probiotics, strains, yeast-based.
There's an example, you jump for IBS, so want to by women's cells.
So being yeast-based, there's a couple of advantages.
One being it's a yeast, so it.
Susceptible to antibiotics.
So if you are using it during an antibiotic treatment, it continues to be effective and bacteria based will obviously be impacted by the antibiotic treatment.
So there's some uniqueness in being yeast-based, and that's now a point of difference of clinically validated products, strong sciences, you sort of take that I guess for granted, being the brand of that produces and it comes with fully validated.
Claims and scientific understanding.
With sustainability is sort of a pillar for your natural products and industry, how does Nis keep sustainability sort of at the forefront?
We look at sustainability at three levels.
We look at it in terms of how we operate, so how we operate our manufacturing sites, most sustainably, process optimization, focus on wastewater treatment, water consumption, carbon emissions, etc.
We look at the sustainability embedded in products and then we look at the product impact and whether we can have a sustainability.
One example could be my contour that we are showing at the show which it's a employable software which this is.
Animal thrived.
Our version is a fermentation phase phase, no animal privy in the process.
It's sustainable.
It's consistent with a quality point of view, and a good example where sustainability goes from just being about how we manage a factory.
To a product that brings sustainability back in itself as part of it.
Can you give us some insights into the importance of, customer engagement at Gnosis and how Nosis ensures it's meeting customers' needs?
It's obviously super important to us, I think we can do better.
Customer engagement, I think it's part of the shift in strategy is to look at where can we lift the way we engage with customers.
So things like application understanding and application, can we lift what we bring scientifically, I think we're benchmarked, but I think we can do better helping our customers understand the application of technology and ingredients into final formats.
Making sure that what we bring is innovative, strong, unique value propositions.
We don't want to make the money markets, so we want to give our customers a clear point of difference.
We have very strong product branding.
There's a, there's an output of all of that as a result of that, and last year alone, we did more than 350 trademark licensing agreements for our ingredient brands.
So it says something about the value that comes with branded ingredients, and we've got to make sure we continue to deliver that value.
I think that's ultimately what our customers want.
So continued investment in science, continued investment in education, continued investment in in training, engaging with consumers, even if we are just an ingredient manufacturer, making sure we bring that additional products to life.
You kind of already answered my last question, but can you give us a little more insight into the future of Nosis and what the industry can expect in the coming months?
I think short term it's about unleashing the new strategy, sharing that with everyone around us.
Part of that will come into the brand, so we'll begin to slightly different when we are 36 months.
A clearer vision of why we exist, why we matter to our customers and and to consumers.
Further out, I think it's about new innovations and making sure that we're coming with solutions and answers in the spaces that today don't have that in that area we are probably 1218, 24 points before we get to see that.
All right, Bri, thank you so much for talking with us today, sharing your insights.
Thank you, and we look forward to hearing more from you and this is my software in the future.
