Extracting value from innovation

by Karl-Werner Quirin, Flavex Naturextrakte GmbH

Dr. Karl-Werner Quirin explains how strong innovation is an essential element of business success in a competitive global market.

“Our extracts are offered worldwide in the B2B field as flavouring or active ingredients for food and supplements, cosmetics and perfumery.”
-Karl-Werner Quirin, Flavex Naturextrakte GmbH

FLAVEX is already a long-term player on the market; can you explain the core activity?

Karl-Werner Quirin. The company was founded 24 years ago by Dr. D. Gerard and myself in the form of a university spin off. Since that time, the focus of activity has not changed. Of course, over the years there have been developments in order to improve infrastructure, procedures and products but we still concentrate on production of supercritical botanical extracts exclusively at our Germany-based site. This means we care about all the relevant steps from analysis of botanical starting materials, their conditioning, supercritical extraction, extract processing right up to batch related certification of products. All this is done under one roof in a traceable and documented way. This allows us to guarantee product consistency, purity and authenticity. Our extracts are offered worldwide in the B2B field as flavouring or active ingredients for food and supplements, cosmetics and perfumery.

On the other hand our activity is not directed towards downstream processing, especially not in food industry since this is a fragmented field with beverages, dairy, meat, salty and sweet products to mention but a few. Such value added procedures are traditionally offered by flavour houses and not in our primary interest.

How did FLAVEX experience last year's financial downturn?

KWQ. As a producer we depend of course on our industrial clients, who again rely on the purchasing patterns of the end consumer. It was our impression that the first half of 2009 was characterised by some uncertainty in the markets. As an understandable consequence, customers reacted with precaution by reducing stocks and optimising procedures. Accordingly, we saw some slowdown in sales despite good positioning as clients come from different countries and different industries. Fortunately this was no lasting reticence and after the summer holidays we faced increasing demand, which more than compensated for the decline in the first half of the year. This lets us look ahead with optimism.

How do you see the future of the company?

KWQ. It is the intention to remain private and independent and further develop the strength of the business. We have just completed a €3 million building project, which provides an additional 2000 square metres of space for laboratory, storage, handling and filling of extracts under improved standards, and additional office area as well.

Besides that we are presently installing another high-pressure extraction plant, which will improve our capacity and flexibility. The particular feature of the new plant is that it can handle high amounts of ethanol as co-solvent. Ethanol is the only solvent that fits to the natural character of CO2 and it can even preserve the organic certified status of extracts if it is obtained from organic grain. The new extraction process expands the lipophilic character of pure CO2-extracts to more polar constituents for example phenolics, which are big group of actives present in many interesting plants. The intention is not to replace traditional hydro-alcoholic extraction but to establish a new series of products that will be marketed as HPE (High Pressure Ethanol) extracts later on. But this needs some time and further development.

What constitutes your business success?

KWQ. On the one hand it is down to the sustainable long-term concentration on key business. On the other hand, it is because our activity has always been R&D driven. This includes improving procedures, looking for new opportunities and efforts to present one to two new products per year. The company's competence and its advanced extraction technology were acknowledged by the Frost & Sullivan Technology Innovation Award at the end of 2005. According to Frost & Sullivan, over the years FLAVEX has earned a reputation for producing the finest CO2-extracts. An important factor that has contributed to our success is the excellent infrastructure facilities, which have continuously supported technological breakthroughs and various product innovations. Other factors are the company's foundation of strict quality measures and the detailed documentation of products and procedures. It is our credo that knowledge creates innovation and innovation creates markets. Innovative strength is an essential element in global competition.

Biography

Dr. Karl-Werner Quirin is Managing Director of FLAVEX Naturextrakte GmbH. He is a chemist and received his PhD in 1984 from the University of Saarland, Institute of Pharmacognosy and Analytical Phytochemistry. For 24 years he has worked as CEO of FLAVEX Naturextrakte GmbH, a company producing specialty botanical extracts for cosmetics, food and dietary supplements on the base of supercritical CO2-extraction.