New raw material supplier cuts out middlemen

The Alpharetta, Georgia-based company, which has been up-and-running for just six weeks, can offer cheaper prices thanks to the number of channels the product goes through, director of marketing Katie Ferran told NutraIngredients-USA.com. If material comes from a factory in China, typically the material is passed from the factory to a broker, to a trader, then on to the distributor - that is, four different channels, all of which add their own cut. "We are trying to work like a manufacturer's representative, going straight to the factory and cutting out the middlemen," said Ferran. Both Ferran and sales director Nick Bain have been in the business for 10 years, as product managers for raw material suppliers. The company has already carved out an agreement with Bajaj Healthcare in India to be its exclusive distributor in the US for choline bitartrate USP (used for cognitive function and in multivitamins), natural caffeine (included in a lot of diet products) and the amino acid L-lysine monohydrocholoride. Ferran said that this is the first exclusive agreement that the company is promoting at present, and it is working on others. It also supplies other commodities, including pyridoxal 5 phosphate, methylcobalamin, vitamin K USP, glucosamine, Saint John's wort, gingko and milk thistle extracts. "From what our customers are telling us, we are coming in at between 10 and 20 percent cheaper than other raw material suppliers," she said, "but it does depend on the product." The company also boasts that it does not have large volume ordering requirements, with the minimum order for most products being one 25kg pack. The exception to this is co-enzyme Q10, which has been in very supply in recent times and is therefore an expensive ingredient. The minimum order for this is one kg. As to TR International's CoQ10 supply, Ferran said: "We have a good working relationship with a potentially leading Chinese manufacturer and are currently evaluating quality/stability attributes of the product."In order to ensure products are of a high quality, Ferran said that the company is using independent laboratories to test raw materials using the vendor qualification program. Ferran and Bain are working with factories with which they have a established relationships over the past decade. Currently they are sourcing materials from China (where they have a locally-staffed office), India, and a little from Europe. As to the prospects for the company, Ferran said it hopes to achieve $5 to 7 million in sales within 2 years, and $10 million by the 5-year mark. "We want to be a recognized brand in the industry, so that people think of TR International if they have a need to source." External links to companies or organisations mentioned in thisstory: TR International