The chemical giant has entered into an agreement with the Bellevue, Washington-distributor to market human nutrition products including a range of fat- and water-soluble vitamins, carotenoids and health ingredients for the food, beverage and dietary supplement industries.

BASF has worked with ChemPoint in the past, but by naming them as a preferred partner, this present arrangement indicates the importance of e-distribution in the business model of global ingredients companies.

"Our customers in the food, beverage and dietary supplement industries will benefit from the combination of BASF's production and technical expertise with ChemPoint's marketing and e-distribution capabilities," said Folker Ruchatz, director of Pharma Solutions and Human Nutrition for BASF North America.

BASF's line includes vitamins, beta-carotene, lycopene, lutein, coenzyme Q10 as well as omega-3 fatty acids. The company - which has approximately 94,000 employees and posted sales over $50.4b in 2005 - manufactures nutritional ingredients that are used in the manufacture of tablets, hard and soft gelatin capsules, infant nutrition, functional beverages, juices and food products.

The company would not expand on whether or not it is building a specific platform for these products.

"We don't comment beyond that because it is our policy not to provide details regarding specific regions, markets or ingredients," said BASF spokesperson John Schmidt told NutraIngredients-USA.

ChemPoint said it has a differentiated marketing model in order to sell technically supported ingredients across the food, pharmaceutical and nutraceutical industries among others. Its parent company, Dutch firm Univar N.V., is a large global chemical distributor with 7,000 employees.