The United Natural Products Alliance (UNPA), an international association representing more than 100 leading natural products, dietary supplement, and scientific and technology and related service companies, and TraceGains, the leading provider of supplier compliance and quality management software for the food, beverage and supplement industries, have entered a strategic partnership designed to increase quality, management, and transparency in the global supplement supply chain.
 
TraceGains is an advanced network platform that allows companies to automate and streamline their processes through instant information sharing and collaboration throughout the supply chain. In addition to facilitating compliance documentation, companies using TraceGains can access a directory of suppliers and ingredients that currently includes more than 5,900 suppliers in 90+ countries, over 100,000 ingredients and a library of 550,000+ discoverable documents.
 
“We have an increasingly complex supply chain and regulatory landscape,” said Loren Israelsen, UNPA president. “Both domestic and foreign suppliers are often not equipped to meet the new Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) recordkeeping requirements, and the industry as a whole is suffering from certifier audit fatigue. UNPA chose to partner with TraceGains because the supply chain transparency its software provides is in alignment with UNPA’s long-standing mission to help industry provide end-use consumers with natural health products of superior quality, benefit, reliability and sustainability.”
 
“Supplement companies are struggling to stay on top of the growing mountain of regulatory documentation required to ensure product safety,” TraceGains CEO Gary Nowacki said. “It’s also time-consuming and difficult for manufacturers to find compliant suppliers and key ingredients. We recognized these challenges and built an advanced network platform that’s revolutionizing information exchange between buyers and sellers. We’re pleased to partner with UNPA to ensure more businesses can join us in transforming the supply chain.”
 
TraceGains, which recently purchased the assets of Portland, Ore.-based Healthnotes, and UNPA will jointly conduct educational programs to help address industry pain points, such as FSMA, new product development and audit readiness. Additionally, the UNPA-TraceGains alliance will work collaboratively to develop and promote industry best practices around raw ingredient sourcing to boost supply chain trust and transparency.