Layn’s new business unit harnesses botanicals for nutraceuticals, sports nutrition and personal care

28 Sep 2020 --- Layn Natural Ingredients has launched a new business unit that provides botanical ingredient solutions for the health, wellness, sports nutrition, personal care and cosmetic markets.

Dubbed Nutræ, Layn’s fourth unit offers three branded platforms, which each offer proprietary blends, tailored formulation support and standardized individual ingredients.

The Essentials platform caters to health essentials and supplements, while SportsActive is for the sports nutrition and active lifestyle space. Lastly, Care & Beauty is geared toward the personal care market. 

“There hasn’t been a better time to be in nutraceuticals and personal care,” Elaine Yu, president of Layn Natural Ingredients USA, tells NutritionInsight.

“Many areas in nutraceutical and personal care were growing even before COVID-19. Now that a number of health concerns have been accelerated, we see heightened interest in ingredients that help support healthy mood, stress relief, sleep, energy and immune function.” 

While Layn specializes in stevia and monk fruit extracts, it also offers botanical offerings. According to Yu, the company has agronomy, extraction, innovation and scale of a fully secure and developed supply chain for a full portfolio of hundreds of additional botanical extract solutions.

She also observes that the lines continue to blur as nutraceuticals and supplements are becoming more like food, and food becomes more functional.

“We are rapidly innovating and scaling new ingredient solutions to deliver the benefits of botanical extracts in formats consumers prefer.” Consumers who are demanding more natural health support are looking for iron-clad scientific backing. 

Addressing naturality demands
Disappointed with conventional therapies and associated negative side effects of synthetics, many consumers of all age groups and demographics are looking for more natural solutions, according to Yu. 

“Consumers are increasingly seeking natural products with proven efficacy. They are specifically looking for natural, holistic alternatives to chemical, artificial, pharmaceutical and synthetic therapies.”

According to Innova Market Insights, two in three global consumers specifically want to avoid products with ingredients that are difficult to understand. Additionally, product launches with natural claims have seen a CAGR increase of 5.3 percent between 2017 and 2019.

Interestingly, this appears to be linked with health perceptions, with 65 percent of global consumers considering natural food and beverages to be healthier. Two-thirds of global consumers agree that natural claims are an important aspect of influencing purchase decisions, according to the market researcher. 

Scientific backing
Yu details that as consumers are demanding more natural health support, they are not satisfied simply with the knowledge that certain herbs and botanicals have been used traditionally and effectively for thousands of years. 

“Particularly in the nutraceuticals space, consumers demand hard-hitting scientific evidence to support specific health claims and methods of action. Scientific research continues to reinforce and validate the traditional knowledge of many botanicals.”

She explains that science continues to validate the efficacy of the active constituents in various botanicals for overall health and well-being.

“Because Layn offers standardized extracts of botanicals, we are able to deliver specific and consistent levels of active constituents from batch to batch. This is particularly important in nutraceutical applications, where exact dosage levels must be accurate and consistent,” Yu adds. 

A two-fold plan
Layn intends to continue researching and creating formulation-ready proprietary blends. This is in addition to offering tailored formulation support to nutraceutical and personal brands seeking to incorporate botanicals for innovation and competitive differentiation.

The other area of interest is continuing to place a focus on legacy ingredients that “stand the test of time” in terms of active constituents backed by science. This includes ginkgo, rhodiola, bilberry, citrus, gotu kola, grape seed and green coffee beans.

“It’s exciting to work with these ingredients – and also some new combinations and intriguing lesser-known botanicals in the interest of holding special value for human health,” Yu stresses. Through its HempRise subsidiary, Layn is involved in combining CBD and botanicals in products such as gummies. 

Adaptogen and CBD developments
There has also been a significant uptick in adaptogen demand. “These herbs and botanicals exert a normalizing effect upon bodily processes and have restorative properties that help the body adapt to stress,” says Yu.

“These unique botanicals are gaining increasing attention as consumers seek natural alternatives for dealing with stress and anxiety. We’re developing some very interesting solutions in this realm,” she flags. 

Through its HempRise subsidiary, the company is also heavily involved with combining botanicals and CBD in a variety of products, including tinctures, cosmetics, skincare products and gummies. 

In July, a HempRise expert detailed the potential synergies in this space.

For brands that cannot work with CBD due to regulatory restrictions, Layn is also developing a variety of CBD-free alternatives for endocannabinoid system support.

By Katherine Durrell