As speciality chemicals company Cognis heads for the FiE, results released yesterday show a rise in organic growth for the health and nutrition arm of the company in the third quarter.
A testing economic climate saw the unit recording a 5.1 per cent dip in sales to €202 million, but despite this, organic growth rose by 0.8 per cent compared to the same period in 2002.
The company attributed the growth to a series of marketing measures aimed at the North American market 'in order to promote the sales of its products and to strengthen the position of Cognis as a supplier of ingredients for nutritional supplements and functional foods on solid scientific basis'.
Overall the Cognis group generated sales of approximately €2.25 billion in the first nine months of 2003.
Spun off from German chemicals firm Henkel in 1999, Cognis was acquired by a consortium of investors comprised of the Permira Funds, GS Capital Partners and the Schroder Ventures Life Sciences Funds in November 2001.
Next week in Frankfurt the company will be pushing its latest product ideas targeted at the health domain.
"At the FiE we'll be focusing on concept-driven new product ideas, using our extensive and growing range of natural source ingredients," said Dr Franz Timmermann, market segment manager at Cognis Nutrition & Health.
Keen to increase market share, the company will use the show as a platform to promote its latest brand, Tonalin CLA. Pitched as a fat-reduction ingredient, Cognis won the rights to Tonalin earlier this year from Norwegian firm Natural. The product is a natural form of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) derived from safflowers. CLA is also said to help maintain a healthy heart and boost the immune system.
In an interview with our sister site NutraIngredients.com, Kathleen Moran, market segment manager for dietary supplements at Cognis, said:"Tonalin has more than 70 per cent of the market share, and we will obviously try to grow this." She added that there is not much room for competition. "The market needs to grow much faster before any competitors can enter. And the claim area is so tight, with WARF owning most of the patents. Only Cognis and Loders have licences for these."
The ingredient is made at its site in Illertissen in Germany, by a proprietary process which results in a high level of the two active isomers - cis-9, trans-11 and trans-10, cis-12. Its composition is licensed by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), which holds the majority of patents on CLA.