Lipid Nutrition launches 95 per cent CLA
concentration of its Clarinol brand conjugated linoleic acid (CLA),
said to be the highest form of CLA available to the nutraceutical
market.
Until now, 80 per cent was the highest form of active CLA isomers available with access to patent claims of reducing body fat and increasing lean muscle mass.
Research has shown CLA to improve weight reduction and decrease body fat, giving huge potential in today's booming weight loss market.
Clarinol A95, with active CLA isomers at 95 per cent, will allow supplement makers to offer a more highly concentrated 1g capsule or use smaller capsules to provide the same amount of CLA to the consumer.
This could have cost advantages, Lipid Nutrition sales director Ruud Peerbooms, told NutraIngredients.com.
"The starting price for Clarinol is €45-50 per kg. Normally an increase of 10 per cent in concentration means a slightly higher price but the customer will make savings on encapsulation," he added.
Such advantages are not yet provided by main CLA competitor Cognis although the German firm was quick to follow Loders with a self-affirmed safety assessment in the US (GRAS) for its Tonalin brand CLA and its ingredient has also been first to reach food applications through a dairy range in Spain.
"We are definitely working on that [food applications] and believe that the next step for CLA lies in dairy applications," said Peerbooms.
The health claims regulations in Europe make this a tricky process however.
"To bring a totally new concept to market is somewhat risky for our customers. It takes a while to find an angle to promote the ingredient, especially related to foods. They have to think of a smart way of getting round this [the restrictions to be imposed by a Europe-wide regulation on health claims, which bans all mention of weight loss and similar claims]," he added.
The US however will present Loders and competitors with a bigger opportunity and more liberal attitude to claims. It represents the world's biggest weight management foods market, seeing rapid growth as a result of the obesity problem in the US. In an interview earlier this year, Lipid Nutrition marketing director Katinka Abbenbroek said the company expected food use to more than triple current demand for CLA.
The market for CLA, worth around €40 million according to an estimate earlier this year, is tightly controlled by a handful of companies that have licensed patents from US-based WARF, the technology transfer unit of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to Norway's Natural, which carries out research on lipids. Natural has in turn licensed its patents for CLA in dietary supplements to Lipid Nutrition and Cognis, the biggest supplier of the product that currently holds about 70 per cent of the market.
