The Slovenian company counts its Inolens, Vivox and Aquarox brands of rosemary extracts as its major growth promoters, with recently launched versions aimed at uses in meats, omega oils and pate.
However it is also eyeing opportunities in other extracts, such as high-purity lutein, and expects the new capacity to help ease its way into new markets. Vitiva entered the lutein market this year with the launch of encapsulated VitaLutS, which is said to allow for smaller, more manageable, forms than previous industry standards.
The capacity expansion has a good level of flexibility built in, which means it does not need to go off-line when production needs to increase by increments. CEO Ohad Cohen said this "allows [Vitiva] to ideally utilise [its] capacities and enables capacity increases without affecting the reliability of supply to customers".
What is more, he flagged the possibility of Vitiva acquiring another company in the area - a manoeuvre that would mark a first deviation from its core strategy of expansion through launching its own, new extracts.
It is not know whether an acquisition target has yet been identified.
Vitiva has also been effecting collaborations with other food companies. For instance, in May it struck a deal with Elite Food Ingredients of Moscow to target the Russian meat sector.
Last year it teamed up with Food Ingredients Technology to tarket the UK functional foods market.
The company does not publish financial results, but has said that this year to date has been "key in the firm's repositioning towards value-added ingredients".
It says it has seen "an increase in incoming business in 2006 and 2007".
