Lipid Nutrition deal brings weight management focus to US

Lipid Nutrition has signed an agreement to make ChemPoint the exclusive distributor of its weight management ingredients to the North American dietary supplement market.

The Netherlands-based firm said the new partnership, effective last week, would provide more efficiency and customer service to users of its Clarinol CLA and PinnoThin products.

Under the partnership, Lipid Nutrition said it would devote one team exclusively to the dietary supplement industry, and one team to the food industry. This would allow it to offer more targeted expertise, provide “market-ready solutions” and expand its reach “in a time of strategic market growth for products such as CLA,” said the firm.

“The partnership with ChemPoint provides us with a great opportunity to further extend our geographical reach (…), as well as ensure that we are providing a streamlined, efficient and cost effective method to bring these ingredients to our customers without sacrificing customer service," said Marianne O’Shea, director North America for Lipid Nutrition.

ChemPoint is an ‘e-distributor’ of specialty fine chemicals in both North America and Europe, working out of its centers in Bellevue, WA, USA and Maastricht, The Netherlands.

Clarinol

Conjugated linolenic acid (CLA) is a fatty acid naturally present in ruminant meat and dairy products. Due to changes in the Western diet, average intake of CLA has fallen; if the fat is removed from a dairy product to make a low fat version that will be acceptable to consumers, CLA is removed along with it.

Lipid Nutrition’s Lipid Nutrition's CLA ingredient is derived from safflowers. It has two CLA isomers – known as trans-10 cis-12 and cis-9 trans-11 – which are respectively responsible for the effects of reducing body fat and increasing lean muscle.

In July this year, Clarinol received FDA-notified GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status, which opened up its use in foods and beverages in the US.

PinnoThin

PinnoThin is a weight-loss ingredient derived from pine nuts. It was first launched in 2005 as an oil, and has so far been used in dietary supplements and a limited range of food products in the global market. In April this year, Lipid Nutrition launched a powder version of the ingredient, allowing for easier incorporation into food products.

The company extracts the long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid pinolenic acid from the seeds of the Korean pine nut tree (Pinus koraiensis), one of more than 140 varieties of the nut, which also grows in China.

The oil contains pinolenic acid, linolenic acid, and oleic acid.

The pine nut oil in the ingredient works by increasing two hormones in the gut which sends signals to the brain, telling it you are full and do not want to eat anything else.