The event will take place in Singapore on September 24, the evening before Vitafoods Asia 2018 gets underway.
The awards are open to companies across the globe, providing their products or ingredients are available in at least one APAC market.
The 12 award categories include: Ingredient of the Year: Sports Nutrition, Ingredient of the Year: Infant Nutrition, Ingredient of the Year: Healthy Ageing, Ingredient of the Year: Weight Management, Probiotic Product of the Year, Botanical Product of the Year, Omega-3 Product of the Year, Personalised Nutrition Initiative, Start-up Award, Nutrition Research Project, NutraChampion Award, and the Editors' Award for Functional Food Innovation.
The cost per entry is US$195 for all categories except the NutraChampion Award and Editors' Award for Functional Food Innovation, for which entry is free. Entries will close on 24 May.
The awards will feature a panel of esteemed judges with a wealth of experience in APAC's health and nutrition industry. Last week, we featured the first six judges, and here is the lowdown on the remaining seven.
Jeff Crowther
Jeff Crowther, Executive Director of USCHPA, has extensive experience in the natural health product industry. He has held positions in retail management, international business development, and regulatory advocacy. He is recognised as a leading expert on China's dietary supplement and nutrition industries.
Since 2005, he has been living in China and working closely with the Chinese and US governments to encourage the further development of China's dietary supplement industry, and to promote the association's members' products and services.
The association is a non-profit organisation and represents the largest grouping of global dietary supplement and nutritional ingredient manufacturers operating in China.
The USCHPA is not only an industry advocacy group, it also offers its members a wide variety of business services such as product registration, customs clearance, trademarking, partner search and any other undertaking its members need to succeed in one of the most challenging markets in the world.
Deepak Gunvante
Deepak Gunvante has held senior leadership roles with GSK, Unilever and General Mills. His expert domain knowledge is in consumer insight-based innovation, nutrition claims, clinical studies and regulatory affairs.
He is also a certified performance coach from the Human Performance Institute for its renowned Corporate Athlete course, and a certified executive coach (by Marshall Goldsmith) for senior employees / leaders.
As the CEO of DG Associates, he is currently focusing on adding value in three areas in which he has the most passion: driving innovation for accelerated business growth, business development, and performance coaching.
Hisaaki Kato
Hisaaki Kato has worked with international food and nutrition businesses inside and outside Japan for over 30 years. As CEO of Smoothlink, he now specialises in helping such businesses to overcome cultural, regulatory and business obstacles as they expand into the Japanese market.
Before joining Smooth Link in 2012, he spent eight years building DSM's Japanese business and managing its merger and acquisition activities in the region. He previously managed global accounts for Roche Vitamins Group, creating a new market for carotenoids.
He has a BSc in Animal Sciences from Kitasato University in Tokyo.
Michelle Teodoro
Michelle Teodoro is a Food Science and Nutrition Analyst at Mintel, specialising in food science and ingredients, with a focus on nutrition. As part of her role, she is responsible for analysing and providing insights on health, diet and nutrition trends, regulations and food science advances.
Prior to joining Mintel, she spent most of her career in the field of nutrition and dietetics, concentrating on food service, clinical nutrition, health and wellness programme management and nutrition research.
She previously worked as a nutritionist at Compass Group, a food and support service provider; science research analyst at the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (Department of Science and Technology) in the Philippines, where she conducted national clinical research projects; and a therapeutic dietitian in a premier hospital in the Philippines.
Peter Barraket
Peter Barraket has more than 18 years' experience across the health food, vitamin and dietary supplement industry.
In 2003, he joined Australia's largest vitamin and dietary supplement company, Blackmores, as its Corporate Development Manager, before being promoted to the position of Chief Financial Officer, and then Director for Australia.
In 2012, he was recruited by Private Equity firm Next Capital to run the supplements division of one of their portfolio companies, Vitaco, New Zealand's largest vitamin and health food company.
Most recently, he was the CEO of Mr Vitamins, Australia's largest independent health food retailer. He was responsible for selling the business to private equity for more than $20m and setting the strategic direction for their expansion.
He currently runs his own strategic advisory business called Natural Core, specialising in developing core business strategies for participants in the natural product space.
Dr Wai Mun Loke
Dr Loke obtained his PhD with Distinction (Chemistry & Pharmacology) at the University of Western Australia in 2009. He continued his postdoctoral training at the National University of Singapore, before taking up a lecturer position at Nanyang Polytechnic in Singapore.
His main research interest lies in functional foods, the validation of their health benefits, and their development and incorporation into diets, and he has published more than 30 scientific articles in international peer-reviewed journals.
In 2013,he set up the Centre for Functional Food & Human Nutrition at Nanyang Polytechnic, and has since worked with more than 10 local food companies to validate and develop novel functional food products.
Other than R&D, he has lectured on Food Chemistry and Human Nutrition at Nanyang Polytechnic, and worked as a convenor with the Singapore Standard Development Office in setting up the guidelines for Singapore's food industry to design and develop functional food products.
He now manages Innovprof, a privately owned company he set up in 2017, to continue his R&D in functional food. He also currently holds adjunct lecturing positions at the Newcastle University and Nanyang Polytechnic.
Gary Scattergood
Gary Scattergood is the Regional Head for APAC at William Reed and Editor-in-Chief of NutraIngredients-Asia, FoodNavigator-Asia and CosmeticsDesign-Asia.
He started his career as a newspaper journalist in UK, where he we went on to edit several regional titles.
He first joined William Reed in 2011 as Editor of Food Ingredients, Health and Nutrition, and Associate Editor of Food Manufacture. After two years, he moved on to take over the leadership of several global travel-retail publications and events.
He moved to Asia in 2015 to lead the region-wide communication and advertising teams for business media brands PRWeek and Campaign, before re-joining William Reed in August 2016 to open its first Asia office in Singapore and spearhead the expansion of its content, events and commercial operations across the region.
He has hosted, presented and moderated at conferences and awards shows around the world, and has appeared on TV and radio to discuss the food and nutrition, travel and tourism, and media and marketing industries.