00:08Hello everybody, this is William Bradford Nichols, the editor of Nutrition Insight, and today we are speaking with Mita Krats, the vice president and general manager of Americas for Lanza Capsules and Health Ingredients.

00:17Hello Mita, how are you today?

00:18Hello, very , thank you, William.

00:20How are you?

00:21Great, we're excited to talk to you.

00:23We've got some questions already, and if it's OK, I'd love to just jump on.

00:25Fantastic.

00:26Let's do it.

00:27So we know that Lanza Capsules and Healthy ingredients sort of is emphasizing helping brands stay one step ahead.

00:34What sort of emerging consumer trends do you see shaping the next generation of nutraceutical supplements?

00:41Actually there's some great data that has just been published in the market by a couple of great reputed researchers like NBJ and what have you.

00:50One of the things that we're continuing to see be important and actually elevate in importance is around plant-based products, organic data-backed.

00:59Claims that you can make on your label.

01:02One of the big ones is around that organic data.

01:05So you know, MBJ just released a study that said over 70%, I think it's around 74% of consumers actually value and they make purchase decisions based on organic claims, for example.

01:18So 74% of consumers out there, they're looking at those labels saying, hey, what's on here that's important to me.

01:24Organic is a big one of those.

01:26And not only that, 50%, over 50%, like 51 or 52% of those consumers are willing to actually pay more, so they're putting their money where their mouth is on that stuff.

01:36So it's not only increasing in relevance, but it actually is going towards the consumer, the price point.

01:43They're willing to invest in their health, and organic is a big part of that, which is super exciting for our industry.

01:50From a nutrition perspective, organics has been a focus, you know, plant-based products, science-backed ingredients, and what have you.

01:58The capogel.

01:59We're launching our organic capsule, so I actually have show and tell.

02:05So we actually are.

02:06Launching our organic capsule and it is 100% plant based.

02:10It's produced here in North America, which is fantastic as.

02:13Consumers are very, very in tune with that also.

02:17The oxygen barrier on this capsule is unbelievable.

02:20We actually have scientific studies that over time.

02:23Ingredients like vitamin C, how they oxygenate and how they actually end up discoloring or their efficacy gets reduced or what have you, bioavailability reduces.

02:32So we've got quite a bit of data behind how powerful the organic capsule actually is and how it works.

02:39So just fantastic innovation in the industry and again we are 100% plant based.

02:45We are.

02:46In North America we have science backing around the quality and the benefits of having an organic cat, and we're catering to what the consumer is looking for.

02:54We're trying to stay one step ahead and really allow our customers to innovate around their products and be more relevant to their consumers on an ongoing basis.

03:04So it's super exciting.

03:06That is exciting.

03:08Kind of piggybacking on some of that with the trends as far as clean label and organic and all the things people or consumers and customers are looking for these days.

03:15We're also highlighting Lanza's sustainability credentials and like local manufacturing and stuff like that.

03:22So how is Lanza integrating sustainability into its capsule production and ingredient sourcing without sort of compromising on performance?

03:30That's a great, great question.

03:31So that's another trend that a lot of the market data is saying is staying at the top, top 5 things that people care about.

03:37Sustainability is gaining popularity and increasing in relevance, so we look at sustainability kind of in two ways.

03:44One is from the customer standpoint.

03:46So what are the things that we can do to help and brands actually show their relevance around sustainability.

03:52So you know, carbon footprint, for example, how sustainable is their supply chain.

03:58So we actually offer solutions to the brands that we work with around things like identifying what their carbon footprint is and about doing, helping them do audits on.

04:07Our supply chain sustainability metrics and helping them improve.

04:11So the reason we're able to do that is a couple of things from our internal experience.

04:16So we have over a century of experience in manufacturing and we've done quite a lot around sustainability.

04:22So water reclamation.

04:24In fact, we have in our Colmar France operation we actually reclaim steam and we work with the local government around their heating programs, so we reclaim steam, we pump it back into the community.

04:36From a heating perspective and so it's a full cycle.

04:39So that's sustainability and those are just examples of things that we do.

04:43We are constantly looking at our global manufacturing network and our supply network to say how do we become more sustainable, have a lower carbon footprint so we can provide those solutions for our customers that ultimately to the consumers they can make claims.

04:58So we also build, I get really excited about this because we also built a center for sustainability, a center of excellence.

05:05So we've actually hired a group.

05:06Experts are in our organization.

05:09We do both things work internally, but we also work with our customers around how can we help them identify what their metrics are, help them meet their targets as a business, and what can we do to continue to give them data around the sustainability metrics that they're interested in, whether it's carbon footprint, whether it's any of the sustainability metrics that they're interested in as an organization or their consumers are interested in.

05:36I love it.

05:37It is such an important topic for the industry, for the globe, to be honest, but this industry is a leader in that space, and we just want to be there to help continue to help nurture it and make it grow.

05:49Exciting.

05:51I only have one more question for you.

05:55Lonzo Capsule Health Ingredients is also kind of highlighting your expertise here this year.

06:00How does combining your capabilities sort of help brands accelerate development and differentiation in this, you know, extremely crowded nutraceutical market?

06:09Yeah, that's it's actually a really good question.

06:11It's something we have put a lot of focus.

06:14Around so we do there's 3 things that we do.

06:16We do really.

06:18There's the capsule business, whether it's gelatin or all the alternate polymers, now the organic caps.

06:23So there's the capsule itself.

06:25There's the ingredients.

06:26So we have a whole portfolio of ingredients.

06:28We have Blockbuster ingredients like UC2 that's really tuned in to longevity, collagen, movement, active lifestyle, that type of thing, and we have a whole.

06:37Portfolio of those so we've got ingredients and then we have our dosage form solutions business which is really an end to end innovation suite.

06:47So we are the innovator's choice with our dosage form solutions business.

06:52The way that that works is end brands consumers have concepts, they have ideas, they come to us, we help them formulate.

07:01We work within capsules.

07:02We are experts in capsules.

07:03We have a portfolio of ingredients, but we also have science.

07:07We have R&D.

07:08We have all these quality and regulatory capabilities that we bring to the table, and we help our brands ultimately.

07:16Build a product that is novel and unique in the market that serves a consumer need, right, and we do that from the very beginning all the way through to production.

07:26We can do that in-house within Lanza Casteel.

07:29It's amazing.

07:29We basically pull together.

07:32The know-how around the dosage form like a capsule, the know-how around R&D around the formulation, we pull in quality regulatory compliance, manufacturing, and we can pull all that together and actually help you produce an end product that your consumers actually want.

07:51So that's really how we take our expertise in product and we pull it all together into a service around creating new and novel products in the market.