After a challenging year due mostly to declines in vitamin E, DSM, Kingchem and PAT Vitamins say business is at last looking up.
With its category hammered by negative media coverage and its margins squeezed by low-cost producers and increasing costs for raw material inputs such as methanol, the vitamin supply segment is a tough industry to be in right now. “We’ve had a bombardment of negative media in recent years,” said Joe LaPlaca, vice president of new business development for DSM Nutritional Products. “The vitamin E meta-analysis created a big hit for the vitamin E category, but it also seemed to carry through to other categories. Vitamin C was soft, and [the negative trend] even started to affect the multis.”
“The average costs have been up on raw materials,” said Ken Yu, sales manager for PAT Vitamins. “Another contributor is energy costs. And another is that EPA regulations, including the Chinese EPA, have been more strictly enforced lately. … We also have a lot of competition with smaller operations in vitamins. They’re offering price driven marketing, with...
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