Press Room
April 18, 2005
Cognis launches Plantalin™ high quality plant extracts – Natural-source ingredients for health-enhancing food and beverages
Cognis Nutrition & Health announces the launch of Plantalin™ - a new range of high-quality plant extracts for foods and beverages, specially designed to be easily incorporated into a wide variety of food and drinks.
“Plantalin™ quality extracts offer excellent solubility”, said Juergen Gierke, Marketing Manager - Functional Food at Cognis Nutrition & Health. “With this new range, our customers can add value to their products – all the perceived health benefits that consumers associate with natural herbs and plants, conveniently available in a food or drink.”
The Plantalin™ range comprises: Aloe vera, Ginseng, Passion flower, Guarana, Lemon balm, Green tea and Green tea low caffeine. With a choice of energizing, calming or balancing qualities, the seven-strong Plantalin™ range offers food and beverage manufacturers new opportunities to enhance the consumer appeal of their products.
Apart from Plantalin™ Aloe vera, which is a water-dispersible gel, all the products are supplied as water-soluble powders which can be readily incorporated into aqueous media at ambient temperatures. The whole range is standardized and carefully-controlled, from raw material to final extract, to ensure reproducible high quality.
Cognis is launching Plantalin™ in response to market trends which, for example, show the functional beverages sector in Western Europe continuing to experience strong growth, with sales predicted to rise by at least 1 million litres by 2008.1 Sports and energy drinks are increasingly popular, as are new tea varieties. There is also considerable, untapped demand for healthier products for ‘on-the-go’ consumption.2 European sales of ‘on-the-move’ food and drinks reached €90,484m in 2003, 43% of which were accounted for by snacks.3
With almost a century of experience in the botanicals industry through its Barcelona-based operation, Cognis is ideally placed to help its customers capitalize on these positive market trends. The company also enjoys a close collaborative relationship with experts at the prestigious Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London. As well as providing plant extracts for functional foods and beverages, Cognis successfully supplies other health-oriented industries, such as food supplements, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.
Plantalin™ is the latest addition to Cognis’ expanding range of natural source ingredients - a range that includes plant sterol esters, conjugated linoleic acid, tocopherols and carotenoids. For further information on Plantalin™, or indeed any Cognis Nutrition & Health quality ingredient, please e-mail functional.food@cognis.com, telephone +49 730313 326, fax +49 730313 287, or visit www.cognis.com for a list of local sales representatives.
1 Zenith International 2003
2 Datamonitor 20 October 2003
3 Datamonitor 12 January 2004
About Cognis
Cognis is a worldwide supplier of innovative specialty chemicals and nutritional ingredients. The company employs about 8,100 people, and it operates production sites and service centers in 30 countries. Cognis has dedicated its activities to a high level of sustainability and delivers natural source raw materials and ingredients for food, nutrition and healthcare markets, and the cosmetics, detergents and cleaners industries. Additionally, Cognis provides solutions for a number of other industries, such as coatings and inks, lubricants, textiles and plastics, as well as agriculture and mining.
Cognis is owned by private equity funds advised by Permira, GS Capital Partners, and SV Life Sciences. In 2004, Cognis recorded sales of 3.07 billion euros and an Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, income taxes, depreciation, amortization and exceptional items) of 362 million euros.
Contact:
Media Contact: Val Holmes
Phone: +44 (0)20 8979 2333
E-mail: valerieholmes@btinternet.com