The role of nutraceuticals in healthcare is growing in prominence with research fueling innovation across the sector to increase the therapeutic value of products.

Consumers are also demanding more from nutraceutical formulations. This is driving change, and new challenges the industry must face if dietary supplements and health products are to remain competitive and relevant. Although “nutraceutical” is a relatively new term, human beings have used food as medicine for millennia, making the category one of the longest-sustained therapeutic trends in healthcare history.

More people than ever understand good nutrition is a reliable route to better health and wellbeing. Consumers are demanding more health value from product options, as well as more convenient ways to supplement diets. People are also taking nutraceuticals to help manage or treat a broad range of conditions. Industry analysts agree that the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated consumer demand for products that support better physical and mental health outcomes.

The momentum and potential of the market now and for the future is palpable, and many prominent food and pharmaceutical companies are investing considerable financial and organizational resources to reach consumers. There is growth ahead, with industry analysts projecting the global nutraceuticals market will grow from the approximately $350 billion it is today to $650 billion by 2030.

This represents a commercial opportunity for global product developers. It also represents a growing responsibility for the industry to deliver ever-higher volumes of safe, effective, high-quality nutraceuticals to consumers, just like its more regulated counterparts in large and small-molecule pharma. It’s also evident that like its allies in pharma, the industry will be increasingly turning to contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs) for the formulation, manufacturing expertise, and capacity it needs to reach markets and consumers faster and more successfully. 

Pushing the Boundaries of Nutraceutical Development

Nutritional science is advancing its understanding of the chemistries and therapeutic potential of a myriad of different nutritional compounds and extracts. Science is also helping developers shape the ways in which they deliver these active nutritional ingredients for improved outcomes and sales.

Developers, retailers, and consumers are all looking for a better, more effective product—and that is a trend that will certainly sustain itself well past 2023. The entire category is driven primarily by consumers, who are increasingly selective about the supplements they buy. It is a completely free-market choice and something that sets it distinctly apart from pharma.

One way nutraceutical developers are supporting increased demand for products and better development pathways is by conducting more thorough clinical studies. With higher integrity data and analytics, developers have the information they need to demonstrate claimed health effects and outcomes from formulations.

Ranging from probiotics to complex plant proteins and botanicals, research and innovation is helping achieve that through better solubility, bioavailability, and targeted delivery of those compounds. Achieving those goals, however, is made more complex depending on the active ingredient and the desired dose form.

There was a time when tablets and capsules, along with their simplified processes and manufacturing techniques sufficed for the vast majority of products on the market, but consumer preferences and science will continue to move the industry away from an overreliance on traditional oral solid dose forms.

This often means delivering products in ways that people prefer and increasingly enjoy consuming. Softgels and the rising champion, the gummy, are two forms gaining significant ground with product designers. Pill fatigue among consumers/patients is a real phenomenon that affects dose compliance and other aspects of choice, consumption, and health outcomes. No matter how effective the active ingredient may be, it will never deliver its therapeutic effect if it is not taken as prescribed or as recommended.

Popular probiotic formulations for example, are increasingly being delivered in softgels on a commercial basis. Research and patent development over the last 10 years has demonstrated omega-3 is one lipid that can support an extremely effective and marketable formulation strategy for consumer probiotics.

By microencapsulating probiotics in omega-3s, developers have the capability to deliver more probiotics in fewer doses to meet consumers’ supplement needs. It’s those kinds of pharma-based unit processes that CDMOs, including Sirio Europe, are increasingly delivering to support the formulation and delivery of consumer-preferred softgels.

Gummies Gaining Serious Ground

Nutraceutical developers always seek to improve the value and competitiveness of their products in the marketplace. This strategy is extremely important because most consumers purchase nutraceutical products through vast commercial distribution and retail systems motivated by product volume and sales.

The advent of chewable vitamins, for example, introduced a whole new category and something that led that generation (now adults) to accept chewable formats for their supplements—with gummies emerging as the top dose form.

According to SPINS reporting on Natural Enhanced and Conventional/MultiOutlet channels, sales of gummy-format supplements grew 23% to $2.6 billion in 2021, exceeding powders (+5.6%, $2.05 billion), capsules (+8.7%, $1.51 billion), tablets (+1.9%, $1.92 billion), softgels (+7.1%, $1.56 billion), liquids (+1%, $596 million), caplets (+12%, $298.6 million), and soft chews (+7.7%, $17.5 million).

Recent innovation in manufacturing and formulating gummies has the industry working to realize even more market and therapeutic potential from nutritional supplements. From immunity to heart health, digestion, mental health, energy and stamina, gummies are fast becoming an optimal way to deliver supplements in ways that consumers love to chew on.

The adult segment, for example, represents a leading market share of 55% in 2020. Gummy consumption is expected to grow rapidly among all age groups at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.4%.

Much of the gummy’s popularity has to do with taste, something the industry used to fix with sugars and fructose syrups. Successfully reformulating gummies without sugar will likely challenge the industry most in 2023.

However, a recent study from Sirio Pharma on the glycemic profile of low-sugar and sugar-free nutraceutical gummies demonstrated that not only can gummies be delicious without sugar, but these formulations can also support a better glycemic response in humans, something very important to people with diabetes.7

Pharmaceutical-Grade Mass Market Appeal

Most of all, consumers want five different things from their nutraceuticals: taste and texture, health benefits, be free from additives, environmentally friendly, and non-GMO. They also want them to be easy to swallow and affordable. To attain those mass-market product goals and meet consumer demands, the industry will be increasingly prompted to access more application science from their nutraceutical manufacturing partners.

The industry is entering a new era and regulators are seeking more oversight of manufacturing processes, product quality, safety, and efficacy. That’s what led pharma to increasingly access CDMOs to manufacture their products and why the nutraceutical industry is sure to follow suit. 

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Sara Lesina is General Manager at Sirio Europe, the European branch of Sirio Pharma. SIRIO is a leading global nutraceutical CDMO, specializing in developing and manufacturing best-quality products including softgels, gummies, tablets, probiotic dosage forms, functional beverages, and more. With state-of-the-art manufacturing sites in China, the U.S., and Europe, Sirio Pharma offers its patented probiotic softgel formulating and manufacturing services to the world’s leading nutraceutical and supplement developers.