Nashville, widely known for a thriving one-of-a-kind music scene, provided the perfect backdrop for this year’s event theme: Sounds of Health & Nutrition; Listen to What Matters. Here, Symposium attendees were immersed into an environment of listening to the sounds of global markets, consumer demands and solutions to keep in tune with market movements.
Led with a company overview by GELITA’s CEO – Franz J. Konert, PhD – unveiling GELITA’s future strategic direction and plans for growth, this presentation set the tone and fast-paced rhythm for the event. Global markets are moving fast – much like our favorite music scores, and it can be challenging to follow the movements.
In previous years, market-level trust has moved largely in lockstep, but for the first time ever there is now a distinct split between extreme trust gainers and losers. In a deep dive into consumer health and pharmaceutical sub-sectors from around the world, Susan Isenberg – Global Chair of Edelman’s Health Sector – uncovered consumers’ search for truth in the healthcare industry. Globally, consumers lost trust in the pharmaceutical sectors while trust in consumer health remained largely unchanged from past years. Here, Symposium attendees gain valuable insights in how as industry players, we can be better purveyors of our scientific information, how we can present content across multiple formats and how to use voices of authority to regain trust and credibility.
While listening to insights of consumer attitudes in the healthcare space, Tom Aarts – managing director of Nutrition Business Advisors – conducted an journey through the historical performance and projected outlooks for the global health & nutrition industry. In this session, Aarts unveiled growing trends in the sports nutrition arena, where there’s a renewed interest in all things protein. What once was a topic for serious sports enthuiasts has now become more accessible to mainstream consumers.
The immersion was followed by a roundtable discussion with participation from Hank Schultz, Deputy Director at nutraingredients-usa.com and Michael Teppner, Global Vice President of Marketing and Communications at GELITA. Here the panel debated provacative topics spanning from who is leading market trends – consumers or industry; are current trends like GMO-free and clean label translating to consumer purchasing behavior or are they simply hype?
Kirti Vatsa - Lead Procurement Analyst at Beroe Inc. – later highlighted gelatine as the most widely used ingredient in the production of hard- and soft-capsules, accounting for a significant portion of the global market share of common excipients. Even with the advent of non-animal based alternatives, gelatine continues a leadership position with no significant disruption in sight. Owing its success to ease and efficiency of use in capsule production and high consumer acceptance, this session addressed the role of gelatine in the global world of capsule excipients. With the market making sounds of demands for “natural”, “non-animal” and “clean label” – the audience discovered how gelatine meets the overwhelming majority of market needs.
Continuing the song of the overwhelming preference for gelatine in delivery systems, GELITA’s team of product management, research & development and sales and marketing experts unveiled GELITA’s latest innovations and research. Presenters featured GELITA’s robust range of unqiue gelatines for a wide spectrum of capsule release profiles. While GELITA’s standard gelatine is the ideal solution for many hard-capsules, soft-capsules and gummies – and is available with various kosher and halal certifications, GELITA also offers GELITA® RXL for reduced cross-linking and improved stabilty; GELITA® RXL R2 for the advantages for reduced cross-linking plus a speedier release of the fill; GELITA® EC gelatine product for one-step enteric softgels; and GELITA® FFP (Fast Forward Process – a three way partnership between GELITA, Hänsel Processing and Winkler und Dünnebier Süßwarenmaschinen) that allows gelatine gummies to be produced without the use of starch.
The GELITA Symposium attendees were alredy familiar with collagen being one of the hottest ingredients of 2018. Here, GELITA took the opportunity to discuss that not all collagens are created equally. Singing the tune of Bioactive Collagen Peptides®, presenters discussed the latest clinical resesarch illucidating the benefits of VERISOL® for beauty from within; of BODYBALANCE®, FORTIGEL® and TENDOFORTE® in sports nutrition products and even of the advantages of PETAGILE® in the improvied mobility of pets. Audience members also had the chance to interact with each other through a series of exercises to showcase the importance of lean muscle mass, healthy joints and strong tendons and ligaments.
While GELITA is improving qualiy of life through custom-designed gelatines for the world’s most deisred delivery formats (hard-capsules, soft capsules and gummies) and life-changing Bioactive Collagen Peptides® scienfitically proven to positively impact the body’s musculoskeletal system; GELITA hosted this event to provide customers and allied partners the opportunity to network, exchange ideas and have fun. Part of the experience included a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to participate in a Nashville recording session – singing along side the industry’s best muscians in the recording of a custom-written song for GELITA Symposium: This Thing Called Collagen.
More than 96 per cent of attendees indicated that they would recommend to a colleague to attend a future GELITA Symposium. Beside scores of new information and ideas, attendees praised the opportunity to make or renew industry contacts. “The overwhelming quality and content of subject matter at this year’s Symposium and the excellent environment for networking, conversation and forging solid business contacts resulted in excited feedback from the attendees, which exceeded all of our expectations,” concluded GELITA CEO, Franz J. Konert, PhD.
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