Taiyo highlights Spartan partnership at Expo West
Taiyo vice president Scott Smith spoke with NutraIngredients-USA at the recent Expo West trade show about the new product line, which was formulated in partnership with Spartan Race founder and CEO Joe de Sena. Taiyo’s reputation for quality was a big selling point, he said.
“A key benefit to partnering with Taiyo is not needing to worry about sourcing and validating our formulas. Taiyo manufactures the majority of the quality ingredients in the Spartan Nutrition line,” De Sena said. “Plus, Taiyo’s research-based ingredients deliver measurable functional benefits.”
The initial Spartan Nutrition line-up includes six products: Spartan Energy, Spartan Focus, Spartan Hydrate, Spartan Immune and Spartan Burn, all based on key ingredients including Raw Coffee Powder, Suntheanine, Teavigo, SunCran and ElderMune, each of which will be sold at Spartan.com, Spartan events, Amazon and select retailers.
Smith: Taiyo brings more to table than just ingredients
Smith said his company’s long history in ingredient supply and development runs beyond just the ingredients themselves and is one of the things that attracted Spartan.
“We can help come up with the concepts. We did a review of their product line and screened the ingredients that would go into the new products, Of course, a lot of those will be Taiyo ingredients,” he said.
“But further, we know the regulatory situation globally. We do reviews of all of the claims. We have relationships with all of our regulator contract manufacturers. We did a launch of Spartan products in Japan that would never have been possible with a regular contract manufacturer,” Smith added.
Certifications addition
In addition to the depth of science behind the ingredients and the reliability of the manufacturing protocols, Smith said the new product line is back with important certifications.
The Spartan Nutrition product line will carry both Informed Ingredient and Informed Sport certifications. Informed Ingredient ensures that each ingredient batch is tested for the presence of contaminants or high-risk materials. Informed Sport confirms that finished formulations and products sold at retail are also free of contamination and impurities.
“Taiyo has stepped up to the plate, and is going above and beyond what most other brands will do when it comes to testing and quality assurance,” said Paul Klinger, business development manager at Informed Sport.
“Ours is a very thorough process that confirms there is little-to-no risk of cross contamination and/or presence of banned substances,” he added.
