The technology was demonstrated to the market by its developer, Belgian company Eleonor, at the recent SupplySide West trade show in Las Vegas.
Industry veteran Benoit Turpin, an executive at the company, said the technology may be new to the botanical ingredients supply chain, but it is not itself new. Turpin has a long history in the development and marketing of food ingredients, including a stint at US company Milk Specialties Global. His role at Eleonor was to expand the company’s products into the US food and beverage market.
“It’s a technique that’s been used in the pharmaceutical industry for decades,”Turpin said. In the field of pharmaceuticals, many active pharmaceutical ingredients are small molecules, some of which have problematic formulation properties. Various approaches have been developed to make these APIs viable from a formulation, manufacturing cost, and shelf-life perspective.
patented technology
In Eleonor’s case, the technology has several patents registered in Belgium that have been extended to the US market. The first patents for the technology date back to 2018.
“It’s not an encapsulation method, and it’s not about microparticles,” Turpin said.
These patents cover a wide range of possible approaches as they apply to the functional improvement of natural ingredients. These patents refer to “natural or synthetic” forms of proteins, oligosaccharides and polysaccharides that are “thermoformed” into a final state with relevant biological activity.
“What we’re doing is using a food-grade carrier with one or more actives, and we’re making those actives more dispersible and soluble,”Turpin said.
A common question when these methods are presented at trade shows is that the prototype is all well and good, but will it work with the ingredient I’m interested in? The highways of food and beverage development are littered with the wreckage of promising projects that never came to completion despite months or years of effort and expense.
long list of finished prototypes
One reason the company’s technology is making such a splash in Las Vegas is that the Eleonor team went the extra mile to demonstrate the technology with a large number of ingredients, proving its broad applicability, Turpin said.
The company already has 15 plug-and-play ingredients that can be used in finished formulations. They range from botanical ingredients (such as andrographis, boswellia, and zeaxanthin), often available in powder or liquid extract form, to organic acids and even boswellia. CBD also demonstrates the technology.
In each case, Eleonor technology will greatly increase the solubility of these ingredients, most of which are difficult or impossible to use in beverages and/or foods due to formulation issues. In most cases, these ingredients are limited to capsules or softgels as dietary supplements.
Profiting From the Food-as-Drug Trend
This will open the door for formulators looking to capitalize on the “food-as-drug” movement, Turpin said. According to IRI, 9 out of 10 US consumers practice some form of self-care and are no longer looking for a single brand or product to address their needs. a recent reportList “holistic wellness” as one of the key emerging trends.
Health injections were one of the technology’s early low-hanging fruits, Turpin said.
“Many of the ingredients we use are not suitable for injectable or other RTD applications,”He says. “We see active nutrition and sports nutrition as the largest market to be hit first.”of
According to Turpin, this will allow formulators to have significant research support when making claims.
“We take well-researched ingredients and make them even better,”He says.
sustainability benefits
In addition to the formulation advantages, the approach could lead to sustainability benefits, Turpin said, because in some cases, fewer rare bioactive substances can be used to achieve functional goals.
“You hear sustainability left and right. Here you have a technology in time. Imagine when it could mean using some scarce natural resources,”He says.