Nutraceuticals World (NW): TSI Group has been at the forefront as a dietary supplement, ingredient, and solution supplier for over 25 years, and the Bio-Active Ingredients Division (BAID) is an integral part the TSI story. How has this history contributed to the value that BAID brings to the supplement world?
 
Pete Mazzilli, Director, Business Development and Marketing, TSI Group LTD: TSI Group has thrived by being a reliable source of unique and high-quality ingredients, usually produced and sold under a brand name. To be fair it is actually very easy to create a brand name for a particular ingredient, in fact companies do it all the time for products they don’t even produce. Often in the supplement world a specific branded ingredient is not even always made by the same producer! TSI Group has a history of doing the research and investing in new ingredients, expanding R&D, and increasing our manufacturing footprint. All of this was the foundation of the technical expertise and insight that is the core of BAID today.
 
NW: TSI Group uses the phrase “Healthy Begins Here” to describe your business. What is BAID’s role in this concept?
 
Mazzilli: “Healthy Begins Here” for TSI Group means we are capable of adding value for customers across the entire health and wellness supply chain—from manufacturing raw materials to finished products. For BAID this means creating high quality raw materials that make it easier to create consumer friendly products in the most efficient way possible. It also means “forward thinking”—that is looking for solutions to problems our customers don’t even know they have. And since we are the Glucosamine Experts and glucosamine helps millions of people stay active by relieving their joint pain, one might say that Healthy literally Begins Here by helping to keep people and animals active.
 
NW: TSI Group has been a lot more prominent lately talking about innovation. Where does BAID fit into that effort?
 
Matt Gowen, Senior Manager, Business Development and Marketing, Bio-Active Ingredients Division (BAID), TSI Group LTD: BAID specializes in solving unique challenges presented to manufacturers adapting raw ingredients to the constant demands of consumers for new products in new dose formats. Our expertise is drawn from our own specialties and those of the entire TSI Group: innovative product development, clinical studies, raw material production, finished dose manufacturing, and even marketing.
 
With our GlucosaGreen® product we are also looking after the health of our planet, with a product that provides significant environmental benefits throughout the manufacturing process. This product is revolutionizing the way glucosamine is made and helping improve the environment. We have also launched our OptiTab technology designed to provide a better material for manufacturing across a wide range of dosage forms, providing more flexibility and better quality in manufacturing, with lower operational costs.
 
Beyond this, TSI Group (and BAID) are looking beyond glucosamine for joint health and exploring new research areas in gut and brain health. We also have a strong internal focus on anticipating consumer trends and adapting materials to meet these needs so our customers are best prepared to make consumer friendly products.
 
NW: GlucosaGreen® seems like a timely product to be talking about now. What sets it apart from traditional shellfish based glucosamine?
 
Gowen: What sets GlucosaGreen® apart is the way this is manufactured. The process that BAID has developed provides an extremely significant reduction in water usage—we’re talking over 96%! This then flows (excuse the pun) into solid waste during manufacturing and therefore greatly reducing environmental impact. Sustainability is a very important dynamic facing our world at present, and it is something that we take very seriously. The evolution of GlucosaGreen® allows us to be good stewards of our environment and the health of people and the planet is in our DNA. BAID’s vision is to help create a healthier world and we can do that with the innovation of products like GlucosaGreen®.
 
What is interesting to us is that GlucosaGreen® ultimately is the same glucosamine that has been traditionally produced, but without concerns over allergies or other dietary restrictions, and yet there seems to be a knowledge gap among consumers about this. We are investing hard with our supply partners to raise awareness because in the end it is really just a matter of consumer education: letting people know this is available, that it is the same glucosamine we’ve all known about for years, and that they should recognize the GlucosaGreen® brand as a mark of quality, consistency, transparency, and sustainability.
 
NW: I heard the reference to OptiTab Technology before. Can you explain this in a little more detail?
 
Gowen: It started with glucosamine powder—this is a difficult and frustrating ingredient to form into tablets. It usually takes a lot of added binders and excipients to compress, and the more you add the bigger the tablet and the fewer active ingredients you can add. OptiTab is the process we developed to “crack the code” for making the ideal glucosamine granule, and having helped many customers make better products at lower costs we are applying this process to other ingredients. We’ve also anticipated growth in other finished dose forms such as capsules and soft chews and then created better raw materials for these processes. In the end it’s about continuous improvement and providing real, tangible savings to our customers.
 
NW: Innovation means you are always looking to the future. What does that look like for BAID and your customers?
 
Mazzilli: Our customers need dedicated partners to help them compete. We believe it is not the customer’s job to take the ingredients we supply and make them work, it is our job to supply ingredients that work precisely the way the customer needs. We want to enable them to use their resources elsewhere. Who else focuses our combination of size, expertise, and global supply chain to create such tangible solutions for our customers?
 
Further Reading:
 
TSI Group’s Founder and CEO Joe Zhou discusses the company’s Vision, Innovation and Solutions.
 
Larry Kolb, President of TSI Group, discusses the Importance of Muscle Health to Quality of Life