Glanbia Nutritionals Customized Premix Solutions business

Overview of Glanbia Nutritionals Customized Premix Solutions business

After establishing the group's Nutritionals business in January 2003, Glanbia acquired German-based Kortus Food Ingredients Services (KFIS) in 2004 - thus making it the Group's first Nutritionals acquisition.

KFIS - or Kortus as it was mostly called - specialises in the research, development and production of customised micronutrient premixes. The purchase increased Glanbia's product range and brought further access to markets in Germany and Central Europe.

After the takeover, Kortus was subsequently re-branded as Glanbia Nutritionals. Kortus has been a supplier to Glanbia well before its acquisition in 2004 and currently supplies the vitamin premix for Avonmore's Supermilk which is sold throughout Ireland.

The business is based in the small town of Orsingen which is near Lake Constance in Southern Germany. Its products are sold throughout Europe, in the Middle East and in Africa.

In September 2006, Glanbia Nutritionals announced the acquisition of California-based Seltzer Companies Inc.. Seltzer is a leading US nutritionals company with strong expertise in the making of customised micronutrient premixes and a sizeable ingredient distribution business servicing the US West Coast. The acquisition of Seltzer was a logical addition to the previously acquired Kortus.

In 2007, Glanbia Nutritionals further expanded its premix business with the completion of a new premix plant in Suzhou, which is located to the north-west of Shanghai, China.

Prior to the opening, production, applications and technical experts from Glanbia Nutritionals European operations provided extensive training for the new Suzhou employees. In addition, key Suzhou personnel spent up to six months shadowing their European counterparts at the German facility. Production at the Suzhou factory commenced in January 2008.

In the same year, Seltzer has commenced the construction of a new premix manufacturing facility in Springfield, Missouri. The first nutritional premix was blended in the new facility on March 16, 2009, less than a year after the first concrete was poured on the site.

The new facility is equipped with state-of-the-art equipment. A number of key customers have audited the facility and were very impressed with what they saw. The Springfield plant services customers in the Midwest and East Coast regions of the United States, furthering the mission to provide the shortest lead times and best customer service in the industry.

On November 12, 2009 Seltzer Companies, Inc. has been re-branded as Glanbia Nutritionals in order to more easily communicate the now global premix offering to current and potential customers.

Since its first acquisition in 2004, Glanbia Nutritionals Customized Premix Solutions business, with Raimund C. Hoenes as its current CEO, has become a leading supplier of micronutrient premixes. Glanbia Nutritionals particularly excels in customer focus, short lead times and responsiveness.


History of Premixes

Even if we try to eat healthy, it is rather difficult to get all the nutrients our body needs on a daily basis. As a direct result, premixes have emerged helping consumers to fill their dietary gaps.

Since they emerged on the market, premixes have evolved from delivering just standard nutrition, such as single vitamins and minerals, to a complex blend of vitamins, minerals, nutraceutical & other functional ingredients. These complex blends of ingredients are used to create an additional health benefit (e.g. cognitive health, heart health, children's health, vitality plus many more) that would not normally be in the food or beverage.

Today, almost any product can be fortified with a premix. However, the most popular items for fortification include flours, sugar and milk, as well as items like yogurts, margarines, cereals, nutritional bars, powdered drink mixes and beverages. Glanbia Nutritionals Customized Premix Solutions business delivers into multiple applications but is particularly renowned for the custom design and manufacturing of micronutrient premixes for the use in:

- Infant Formula
- Dietetic products
- Food & Beverages
- Supplements

Every week we manufacture hundreds of premixes, all of which are highly unique and specifically formulated for each customer. No two premixes are the same and each has been specifically formulated and manufactured with just one particular end-product in mind.


Producing a Premix

Once a premix has been formulated by one of our R&D teams to the customer's requirements, the production teams will blend the ingredients according to this specification. All the necessary ingredients and their respective quantities are listed on the specification. Before the blending process, the exact quantity of each ingredient is prepared. Amounts that are smaller than the original packaging are weighted and repacked to the required quantity.

The ingredients are then transported to the blender which gets filled in a specific order, all according to the specification. Quality control is a vital part of our business; hence we have several checkpoints at which we ensure that we have the correct ingredients and the correct quantities. Yet, our stringent quality control starts well before the blending process since every single ingredient gets checked for its quality upon delivery.

Once a blender is filled with all the required ingredients it will run for approximately 10 minutes. The premix is then packaged depending on the customer's requirements. All of our facilities have special packaging equipment which enables us to package our premixes in a wide variety of packaging materials and sizes. The entire process of manufacturing a premix takes up to 2 hours with preparation (i.e. weighing raw ingredients), packaging and cleaning taking up the majority of this time.


Why our customers outsource their Premixes

Formulating and manufacturing a premix brings several challenges and hence requires a high level of expertise and experience. As a consequence food & beverage manufacturers outsource the manufacturing of their premixes. Another reason why food & beverage manufacturers may want to outsource premixes is to reduce their ingredient procurement to a single supplier. Dealing with one single supplier is much easier and saves valuable time. Purchasing a premix rather than each ingredient individually means that our customers benefit from decreased warehousing and inventory costs.

For further information please call Martin Eisenring on +49 (0)7774 9397 201 or send an email to meisenring@glanbia.ie