BASF makes vitamin A to suit all market tastes
suitable for the spectrum of specialist diets, giving its customers
one ingredient to meet the specifications of every market in which
their products are sold.
Dry Vitamin Acetate 250 DC/GFP can be marketed as vegetarian, allergen-free, kosher certified, halal certified, and GMO-, BHT-, dioxin-, and gluten-free, says the company.
"Having just one globally marketable formulation at hand largely reduces the internal complexity for our customers; and complexity reduction means cost reduction," said head of global strategic marketing human nutrition Martin Jager.
Moreover, it will enable customers to keep their product labels simple, and reduce the need to have different labels for different markets.
A spokesperson for the German chemical group told NutraIngredients.com that it has previously offered a range of vitamin A solutions, but until now none of them has met all the criteria that its clients variously request.
Whilst these options will not be withdrawn from the market, BASF is building up its line of 'one-size-fits-all' vitamins; it has previously vitamin E, vitamin D3, vitamin K1 and beta-carotene formulations based on the same rationale.
The spokesperson said that the company is seeing a strong desire in the market for these products, and intends to continuing to build up the range.
The globalisation of ingredients appears to be a trend within the industry. Product announcements of new ingredients now typically come with a list of claims they can make. Several supplement ingredient firms have gone to lengths to obtain kosher and/or halal certification recently, including plant extract supplier Naturex, and Fortitech.
DSM, BASF's chief competitor in vitamins, has also introduced a range of animal-free ingredients including vitamin A, vitamin E, vitamin D3, Coenzyme Q10 (ALL-Q), lutein, and zeaxantin (Optisharp).
