Cambridge Commodities teams up with Unette Nutrition to produce functional gels
Unette Nutrition Limited gels are being marketed to but also outside of the traditional sports nutrition market, to incorporate on-the-go consumers looking for a quick nutritional hit, as well as consumers who have trouble swallowing large pills.
“Gels are a fast way to ingest the desired nutrients in a single serving packet whilst also providing a great taste,” Emma Cattell, R&D nutritionist at CCL told NutraIngredients.
“As gels have their own individual packaging, there is no need to spend time weighing out and mixing up powders or carrying around heavy shakers full of liquid.”
Cambridge Commodities’ product development team has created three ready-to-go gels:
- Glucomannan gel targeting weight management.
- Multivitamin gel focused on health and wellbeing.
- Nootropic gel for cognitive support.
“We take into consideration the demands of customers, the latest on trend ingredients and effective ingredients with good scientific evidence to support their efficacy,” Cattell said.
“Take for example the Nootropic gel. The blend was designed to contain a range of active ingredients to support cognitive function. We used a combination of vitamins backed by authorised EFSA health claims for supporting psychological function as well as well-known botanical extracts and amino acids and the lesser known up and coming botanical extracts with good research behind them.”
Managing director at Unette Nutrition, David Rimmer said the partnership would yield “fantastic products for both brand holders and consumers.”
The gels come in tear-top tubes for ease of use, and are available from 0.5 ml to 100 ml.
CCL said it was experimenting with other delivery systems including delayed nutrient release capsules.
“Delayed release capsules are a relatively new idea to the market,” said Cattell.
“These allow a sensitive or unstable ingredient to reach its desired destination in the body for optimum absorption, with a decreased risk of potential damage. Stomach acid, medication and even other food supplements can sometimes interfere with the absorption of active ingredients so this method has the potential to increase the bioavailability of the required active.”
Western and eastern European sports nutrition markets are worth about €2bn and are growing at about 12% annually, but will settle down to 8% growth by 2019, according to Euromonitor International estimates that exclude mainstream sports and energy drinks, like Gatorade and Red Bull, low-protein bars and those not positioned as sports products.
The UK (€743m) dwarfs the next biggest market which is the whole of eastern Europe (€255m). Next is Germany (€219m), Italy (€142m), Sweden (€137m) and France (€110m). Sweden has the highest per-head spend at €15, compared to €10 per capita in the UK.
