Don't be surprised if you haven't heard the name Nutrinnovator in a while. The company that was born in February 2003 as the brainchild of Stephen Moon, formerly a director at GlaxoSmithKline's nutritional healthcare division, and which brought nutrition bar Altú to the market, strictly no longer exists. It merged with Provexis, a nutritional technology business, in May last year and Moon is now CEO of Provexis.
"The cereal bar market was getting busier and busier with the bigger companies starting to copy our packaging outright," he says. "We struggled to make our point of difference clear so we sold the Altú brand and decided to move into functional foods that were even more differentiated. Provexis had a patented heart health technology that we liked, so it made sense to join up."
Since then Altú has gone on to become a profitable brand, according to its new owners Go Lower. Relaunched, it won listings in Tesco and Costco. However, Moon has no regrets.
The heart health technology, called Fruitflow, is a natural extract from ripe tomatoes that helps blood flow around the body reducing the likelihood of heart attacks and strokes. It is currently available in a fruit juice drink called Sirco, made by Provexis, and listed in Morrisons, Tesco, Waitrose and Holland & Barrett.
However, a second-generation Fruitflow product is being developed under an exclusivity agreement with "a major branded global food business" that could see the product licensed out to all sorts of foods, drinks and supplements. "We've done research that shows that once people get past 40 they get very concerned about health. There are, in fact, 15.5 million health-conscious people aged over 40 in the UK, and heart health is their number one concern. We're still a small player, but we're the only product focusing on platelet aggregation and it's a big market we're trying to tap into," says Moon.
No comments yet