U.S. Ingredient Industry: Innovative product development to meet shifting consumer preference

“Healthy livelihood” has emerged as a key societal trend not only in the U.S. but also worldwide. This has changed the consumer perception towards the natural, healthy, and side effect-free substances across a wide range of end-use products, ranging from food & beverage, personal care & cosmetics, homecare, paints & coatings, pharmaceutical or any other industrial processed products. This rapidly increasing consumer focus on health issues in the U.S. specially has played a major role in the U.S. ingredient market over the last decade.

In the present scenario, it’s a key challenge for the ingredient formulators is to focus on the development of novel natural ingredient formulations or constituents with the minimal chemical processing in order to meet up the varying demands of the finished product manufacturers. On top of that, the presence of a large number of ingredient manufacturers in the country has been an another key factor contributing to the high competitiveness of the U.S. ingredient industry. Companies have been investing more in the R&D especially for the development of natural formulations. For instance,

- Beraca an ingredients manufacturer has launched natural smoothing elements for curly hair care

- Frutarom Health BU launched a natural active pharmaceutical Ingredient “EFL Apharm” which is the company’s product line comprising both of pharma flavors and phytopharmaceutical constituents to meet the needs     of manufacturers  

- Arjuna Natural Extracts Ltd. company recently launched “X-tend”, the 100% natural and formulation specific preservative developed to enhance the chilled-meat items shelf life with a higher sense of safety

- Capol, a coating and glazes manufacturer has introduced two novel organic fixings, especially for the North American market. These include the acacia-based polishes and coatings and its new Capol organic sunflower-       oil-based ingredients and anti-sticking agents mainly for the confectionery products. 

Another conspicuous factor impacting the industry is its stringent regulatory framework. Over the last decade, there have been significant changes in the country’s regulatory framework and for the ingredient manufacturers to develop products in compliance with these strict regulations along with quality and price issues have become a strenuous task.

Issues related to ingredient production, quality, grade & safety for every end-use market, increasing the complexity of insurance claims, supply chains growing longer while consumers are demanding improved quality and safety have significantly impacted the market expansion. Natural and green ingredients are driving the demand owing to the constructive regulatory towards the environmental friendly products as compared to the synthetic ones.

Comparative analysis: Natural and synthetic ingredients

Parameters	Organic/natural	Synthetic
Price	Stable over long period of time	Volatile
	Dependent on vegetable oil trends	Dependent on petrochemical trends
	High production cost due to increased margins across the value chain	Relatively low production and raw material procurement costs
Toxicity	Most of the organic ingredients toxicity are in the prescribed range	It is a major problem for some of the synthetic ingredients
Regulatory scenario	Offers complete support to the manufacturers	A major hurdle for the manufacturers
Application scope & future prospects	High	Low
Commercialization (Product availability)	Low availability	Higher availability
Raw material trends	Higher cost of procurement	Relatively lower cost of procurement

 

  In-depth report on U.S. ingredients market by Grand View Research:

http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/us-ingredients-market