Following its recent acquisition by Nagase Group, ingredients and premix supplier Prinova is looking to tap into the Japanese company’s geographical network.
The deal, completed last month, will provide Prinova with a larger platform and enable it to pursue new business opportunities in previously untapped countries. As part of the company’s expansion, it also recently established a new subsidiary in Melbourne to service the Australia and New Zealand markets.
At Food Ingredients Asia 2019 in Bangkok, FoodBev caught up with Nic Dam, group managing director at Prinova, to discuss the company’s ingredients portfolio and growth plans under Nagase.
What are the main ingredients you are exhibiting at Food Ingredients Asia?
Nic Dam, group managing director at Prinova.
We have come to FIA predominantly to talk about our nutrient premix capabilities, with three production facilities globally, and one of them being in China, FIA represents a great opportunity for us to meet with new and existing clients from the APAC region. Demonstrating our premixes in various delivery systems we have developed several finished product concepts as you can see here today. We have sugar-free multivitamin gummies with a premix to target immunity, eye health and healthy bones and teeth. Next up we have a new concept to show you, a keto kit in a powdered drink format which contains MCT and Collagen, which are two trending ingredients within the lifestyle nutrition market. Collagen is essential for mobility by providing the infrastructure for the musculoskeletal system.
Everything you see here today demonstrates how we are able to work with finished goods manufacturers and brands from ‘concept-to-completion’, helping to streamline the product development process.
Is there a particular consumer or age group you a looking to market these products towards?
The majority of the product demos you have seen today are aimed at the sports and lifestyle nutrition market. They address the growth in demand for on-the-go finished products where consumers are looking for more convenient delivery systems, whether that is an energy-boosting gummy for a runner or a powder-based beverage to just add water to. Consumers are looking for more convenient and also inventive ways to supplement their diets. Our technical team work with finished goods manufacturers targeting all age groups, from infancy to old age and every step in between, addressing a multitude of health conditions.
What will the Nagase acquisition mean for Prinova going forward?
It’s extremely exciting for us. We’ve been a family-owned business since we started in 1978 and we grew very fast. It’s in our DNA to grow, we like to go into new manufacturing areas, new geographies. The owners of the business felt it was the right time for them to sell the company. When you think about what can make us better than what we are today, that is having more structure in our business and having a bigger geographical approach. Nagase is ten times our size: it is an $8 billion company; we are an $800 million company. They come with maybe a more structured approach to things being a larger company.
The majority of our business is in the Western world: in the US, Canada, Mexico and Europe. That is where Nagase do not have a presence in the nutrition or in the food and beverage industry. That’s intriguing for them. Taping into their geographical network is hugely exciting for us.
For us, the attraction of Nagase is also that they don’t want to change our name, they want to support our current business and help us to grow. We’re in an area, mainly sports and lifestyle nutrition, that they’re not really in today. They want to push us ahead and help us do what we enjoy most, which is growing the business.
What’s the rationale behind the new subsidiary in Australia and New Zealand?
We identified ANZ as having as a large infant and lifestyle nutrition market for our premixes. As we have a new site in China that we acquired two years ago, we thought it would be appropriate and timely to start a new entity in Australia. Again, we have demands from international clients, saying: “Can you please come here and help us.” We are trying to tap into the capabilities we have as a company as well as trying to do more for our clients. The closer we are to our clients, the better service we can offer them.
Are there any trends in Asia that you are looking to take advantage of?
What I can say is that I think the advantage of being a global company is that we see regional trends that we can help clients develop on a global basis. For example, if we go back to what I said about our keto kit with collagen, Asia is much more developed in collagen than the Western world. What we learn from there we can take to our clients in the US and in Europe. I think what’s coming the other way is that our deep knowledge of the sports and lifestyle nutrition market helps us take trending ingredients from the mature and established US market, that we know very well, and help our customers in the EMEA and APAC regions with new product development suitable for their local markets.
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