The AstaReal team had a series of successful events at VitaFoods Asia 2018, highlighted by winning the award for “Best Tasting Functional Beverage” with SoothMe, a strawberry and banana smoothie formulated with AstaReal® and Lactium®. A well-received formulation targeting stress and fatigue management designed for marketing towards busy professionals and everyone who needs support managing a stressful life.
Runner-Up as Best Tasting Functional Food!
The success story of our product concepts continued with an award for another product, a chocolate pudding named MoveMe, formulated with AstaReal® and Prodiet® to support the dietary management of muscle health. Backed by clinical evidence, this concept targets age-related muscle loss, declining mobility and sarcopenia in our rapidly ageing populations.
Highlights from the AstaReal-Sponsored Luncheon Briefing
Dr. Vincent Wood, President of AstaReal Singapore, opened the session by painting a clear picture of emerging health concerns, nutritional needs, market opportunities and introduced our vision of “Healthspan”, the concept of an active, healthy lifestyle well beyond our Golden Years.
AstaReal emphasizes strategic partnerships with local partners, combining AstaReal® with other established ingredients (e.g., Prodiet® and Lactium® from Ingredia) to give rise to new and innovative products, like the AstaReal “-Me” series.
Recognizing mobility as the most common and widespread health concern, AstaReal gave a peek preview of the results from a new sarcopenia study with AstaReal® demonstrating AstaReal’s innovation strives to raise the quality of life for the elderly.
Regulation and Innovation Go Hand-in-Hand
After Dr. Wood demonstrated AstaReal’s innovative spirit and commitment to improving quality of life, Simone Abaron, technical director and health product specialist, shed light on key strategies to create and deliver innovative products that are commercially viable and have the potential to have game-changing impact on the market.
She proposed new strategies to approach product development, strategies to drive brand trust, mitigate risks and maximize marketing opportunities for new, innovative products, including:
Developing a culture of innovation, rather than policing, within regulatory teams.
Creating and leveraging strong relationships with the most qualified suppliers.
Engaging departments that are not typically viewed as being innovative (regulatory, sourcing teams and suppliers); they might become strong innovators!
What B2B Customer Should Look for?
From the perspective of strategic partnership, identifying the right ingredient is the most critical and should be the focal point.
Speaking about “From Bench to Bedside”, Sandeep Gupta emphasized that the entire product development process, from conceptualization to formulation and successful commercialization has to be carefully designed right from the very beginning.
Then, with “The Quest for the Perfect Product”, he discussed how to find the right ingredient. He urged manufacturers to look for origin, and not to compromise on quality and potency. The origin of ingredients should be standardized, safe, with clinically-proven efficacy and backed by verifiable health claims. This will improve your product’s credentials among consumers and increase its market value.
Marketing Magnet: Live Product Demonstration
Showcasing the product examples from our “-Me” series, offering tasting samples and showing our bulk products drew many visitors to our booth. This allowed us to demonstrate the diversity of AstaReal® ingredients and the wide range of finished products that can be created. As a reward, we received wonderful feedback on our live demonstration and were engaged in numerous productive and inspiring discussions punctuating our motto…
“Fuel Your Business with AstaReal”
…highlighting our philosophy of innovation, research and the enormous potential of natural astaxanthin.
Another Attraction: the AstaReal Yoga Class
Staying in line with our ‘healthspan’ concept, AstaReal sponsored a yoga class for 30 VFA visitors. The class was led by Mona Gill, a yogi and “mom-preneur”, at the Sands Skypark observation deck. Our guests enjoyed a refreshing morning of exercise with a phenomenal view of Singapore. To help make the yoga session a lasting memory for our guests, they were provided with a refreshing post-exercise recovery drink concept ideal for marketing to active lifestylers. This drink is another example of synergistic creativity between AstaReal and Ingredia, a strawberry-flavored protein drink formulated with AstaReal® Astaxanthin and Prodiet® Fluid called “ToneMe”.
At the end of a successful day,
….an exhausted but happy AstaReal team!