The award was sponsored by industry body Natural Health Products New Zealand (NHPNZ), and voted for by members.
NHPNZ public affairs director Alison Quesnel said Alaron Products had developed an excellent reputation during its 25 years of custom manufacturing nutraceutical products.
“They are known as being responsive, innovative, collaborative and a total pleasure to deal with,” she said.
These sentiments were common themes in the nominations that Alaron Products received. As one nominator noted, Alaron Products helped them to deliver some large orders in a very tight time-frame: “Alaron worked with us to deliver improved processes, cutting lead times by a third, and working extended shifts to maximise output by the deadline.
“Their efforts were shared across the teams, from customer service, planning, quality, production and logistics, as well as the management team. Alaron Products is a most deserving recipient of this award.”
It has been a busy two years for the Nelson-based firm, which extended its facilities and then acquired a freeze drying business from Pharmalink Extracts.
And earlier this year it became New Zealand’s first NSF certified GMP facility.
General manager Claire Quinn told us: “NSF Certification is a guarantee to consumers that any product with the NSF Logo has been made under strict quality standards and procedures.
“Our whole quality management system was reviewed right from the receiving and testing of raw material,s through to the release and dispatch of finished goods. Any products looking to be NSF registered also must adhere to strict quality standards and are tested to ensure all meet comply with their stated label claims.”
Traceability and efficacy
She added that having additional Internationally recognised certification such as NSF allowed its customers to access more markets and provide their consumers greater product guarantees around quality, traceability and efficacy.
With regard to the Pharmalink Extracts deal, Quinn added that Alaron was building its own dedicated freeze drying facility.
“It has been almost a year since Alaron took over the freeze drying operations from Pharmalink Extracts and the business is going well,” she said.
“Our own dedicated facility is progressing and we have brought an additional 1000kg freeze dryer to offer our customers scale along with continuity for while we are transitioning over to the new facility.”
“The 1000kg dryer will be the first to be commissioned in our new factory. This area of our business really excites us as we can now offer customers’ raw material processing right through to finished product production or any part of this process that they may require. For us it is all about being a complete service provider.”