The sports nutrition market continues to grow as active consumers seek sports nutrition products that offer broader health and wellness with personalized benefits. Euromonitor’s 2019 Report on the “Top 10 Global Trends” noted consumers are actively seeking solutions to take back control of their lifestyles. Findings highlight key drivers such as personalized nutrition along with a demand for transparency—all appealing to consumers as they seek health and wellness products that allow them to feel in full control of their own physical and mental states.

Euromonitor’s report also noted North American sales of both health/wellness and dietary supplement products exceeded sales expectations between 2012 and 2017. This is exciting news for sports nutrition manufacturers, as Grand View Research, Inc. recently reported the global sports nutrition market is expected to reach USD 24.43 billion by 2020.  

“As all generations turn to an active lifestyle for improved health and wellness, they seek food and beverage products to fill their nutritional needs,” notes Tom Hirschbeck, director of R&D for Nellson’s powder division. “It is important for sport nutrition brands to offer products that address the specific nutrition and energy needs of active lifestyle consumers.” 

Hirschbeck highlighted several key considerations when developing sports nutrition products for active lifestyle consumers:

• High quality protein products that offer portable nutrition

• Fusion and taste ephemerality to combat flavor fatigue, which can present a challenge

• Versatile ingredients that provide multiple benefits such as alertness/energy, digestive/gut health, satiety and more

• Convenient portable packaging such as stick packs and single-serve sachets 

• Formulations that address consumers interest in clean label products. 

Consumers are also interested in labels that include ingredients that are … 

• Naturally sweetened

• Naturally flavored

• Organic

• Non-GMO 

• Contain no additives and preservatives

“Active nutrition going mainstream creates tremendous opportunity—and challenges—for sports nutrition brands,” notes Bart Child, Nellson’s senior vice president for commercial development. “As Tom noted, consumers expect clean labels and are seeking new and novel ingredients. This puts pressure on supply chains. As a result, the industry is challenged with supply chain stability and ingredient quality and consistency. This is an area where Nellson really stands out from our competition, as we have invested in both procurement and quality teams to manage the market dynamics, vendor relationships and sustainable supply.” 

Child adds, "We are able to support customers and offer manufacturing flexibility with Minimal Order Quantities with redundancy across our powder network that allows Nellson to support on-trend consumer demands and surge capacity. We are also able to offer convenient, portable packaging options. Our number one goal is to help brands differentiate themselves as we create great-tasting functional powders for active lifestyles that consumers will embrace.” 

Nellson is uniquely positioned in the sports and active nutrition market and helps brands in many ways, innovating together to overcome formulation and production challenges through product launch. They provide the highest quality solutions for successful brands serving the sports performance, health and wellness, weight management, and medical nutrition markets with best-in-class R&D expertise and enterprising product development. Today’s consumers expect a lot, and Nellson delivers with next-level taste and texture, functionality, claims and convenience. 

Visit www.nellsonllc.com for more information.

About Nellson

Nellson, the leading full-service nutritional bar and powder provider in North America, is based in Anaheim, California with production locations in California, Utah, and Quebec. Founded in 1962, Nellson has over 55 years of diversified expertise in nutrition platforms for bars and powders, serving the sports performance, health and wellness, weight management, and medical nutrition market segments. Nellson offers formulation expertise, quality assurance, regulatory support, flexible production, and sales and marketing support. 

About Kohlberg & Company

Kohlberg & Company is a leading private equity firm specializing in middle market investing. Since its inception in 1987, Kohlberg has organized eight private equity funds, through which it has raised over $7.5 billion of committed equity capital. Over its 30-year history, Kohlberg has completed 76 platform investments and well over 180 add-on acquisitions, with an aggregate transaction value of over $15 billion. For more information, visit www.kohlberg.com.