IMCD strengthens US presence with expanded nutraceuticals team
Founded in 1995, IMCD is active across eight market sectors: Pharmaceuticals; Beauty & Personal Care; Food & Nutrition; Coatings & Construction; Lubricants & Energy; Industrial Solutions: Advanced Materials: and Home Care and Industrial and Institutional Cleaning.
While the company has been around for 25 years, its presence in the US in much more recent. The first entrance into the Americas came with an acquisition in Brazil in 2013. The company has only been in the US for seven years.
The US nutraceuticals business, which is housed within the pharmaceutical division, began in the US when IMCD established a coast-to-coast specialty distribution business in 2019 – when HORN changed its name to IMCD US (more than a year after its acquisition).
With an expanded US team stretching from California to New Jersey and down to Texas and Florida, the company is now eying a bigger presence.
“We’re just getting started here, creating a world of opportunity,” Bill Dunn, National Sales Manager, Nutraceuticals at IMCD US, told us.
ANIs: Active nutraceutical ingredients
“IMCD has grown a lot to become one of the largest specialty distributors in the world,” said Dunn. “The resources available to the company are impressive.”
So which ingredients and categories are attracting the most attention? After a couple of years of intense general interest in immune health, Dunn told us that IMCD is seeing consumers paying attention to their own health issues, with brain and lung health coming to the fore. Sleep and cardiovascular health are also hot areas, he said.
Dunn and IMCD are also very excited about the opportunities for the Hofseth Biocare suite of ingredients that IMCD distributes in North America. The Norway-based company has spent about a decade honing its proprietary processes and building the clinical substantiation for its ingredient portfolio, which includes ProGo (bioactive peptides); OmeGo (salmon oil); and CalGo (collagenic hydroxyapatite calcium).
All of the ingredients are produced by upcycling the cast-offs from their parent company’s salmon business: Hofseth International is a major player in the global salmon business and the largest exporter of Norwegian salmon to the US.
IMCD also distributes ingredients from Australia-based Network Nutrition, which IMCD acquired just under a decade ago. Among these are the liposomal Ginkgo ingredient Ginkgosome, which a recent study in BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies indicated that may increase absorption of key ginkgolide compounds by about 2-fold, compared to a regular, commercial Ginkgo extract
Global Technical Centers
Dunn stressed that the company’s capabilities are not just about the nutraceuticals portfolio, but also about the excipients, which are “so integral to the total active nutraceutical ingredient and its delivery. It’s not just about fillers, it’s about delivery.”
There are also the eight dedicated labs or technical centers, including one in New Jersey. “What they do is take a challenging ingredient like salmon oil and formulate it in a gummy that is organoleptically pleasing to the consumer,” said Dunn.
“What you’re getting from our technical centers is a global network of expertise,” added Ella Pochay, IMCD’s Head of Communications, Americas. "In total, there are 65 around the global across all markets.
“This is especially important where expertise in specific markets have relevance in others such as Life Sciences (many food brands venture into nutraceuticals or beauty companies also now sell “beauty from within” concepts with supplements),” she added.
