The Slovenia-based private label company took home the Editors Award for Infant and Child Nutrition Initiative with its formulation >Your< Iron Syrup in the award ceremony held last month.
The formulation, meant to address iron deficiency in children and help them avoid anaemia, has been commended by the award judges for satisfying an unmet consumer need and for presenting strong scientific evidence.
The formulation was shown to improve ferritin levels by 69 per cent in a 12-week RCT involving 85 kids aged nine months to six years old. Findings were published in Nutrients this year.
Speaking to NutraIngredients-Asia, Jernej Klopcic, business development director at PharmaLinea, said that the company had witnessed strong growth for this product in South East Asia.
Citing the example of a pharmaceutical firm which it is partnering, the >Your< Iron line of products reported a 63 per cent CAGR growth between 2017 and 2021.
Another food supplement company in the region also saw 50 per cent growth in the >Your< Iron line each year since the products were launched in 2019.
Aside from children, the >Your< Iron product line also caters to pregnant women and adults through other dosage formats, including sprays, drops, and capsules using the same formula.
Klopcic said that the medical detailing was a highly important retail channel for their clients, as the formula was backed by clinical evidence that medical professionals were looking for.
“Since we are building a lot of assets for the product, a lot of clinical evidence, we believe that the most efficient way in promoting this product, is through medical detailing, which is [for our clients] to explain the benefits of this product to the medical doctors and eventually be retailed through the pharmacies.
“The iron line is our flagship line…When it comes to our performance in the [APAC] region, we have quite a strong performance in South East Asia...where we are recording nice growth on our iron products.”
In terms of dosage formats, the spray products are gaining traction for its convenience factor.
In the upcoming months, the company will be conducting stability studies for its iron products to meet the regulatory requirements and expand into more South East Asian markets.
“We are performing different stability studies, this is to satisfy this region’s specific regulatory requirements…With the new stability studies, we are in the final steps of signing new contracts with other new partners in South East Asia,” he said.
Aside from iron, the company has also seen good growth for its >Your< K2+D3+Ca product line for bone health. For instance, one of such projects in South East Asia had experienced a 160 per cent growth between 2017 and 2020.
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