Sunday, April 5, 2009

The Saga of Socially Responsible Sourcing – Chapter Two. The Blenders.

Turns out that when a person wants to make a whey protein product for human consumption, there are only  handful of companies in the US that can help.  Unless you want to purchase expensive precise blending and packaging equipment, it’s difficult to make these products yourself.  Also, a typical nutritional supplement product contains many different ingredients, all of which can be difficult to source, have minimum order quantities, etc.

As a result, we all work with companies who  source ingredients, blend, and package products.  These companies are wonderfully helpful, but there’s a problem.  They consider the source of their ingredients (and by extension, my ingredients) to be proprietary information.   Their suppliers, ingredient companies, consider their sources to be proprietary, the importers who supply them consider their sources to be proprietary.  The result of all of this is that it is completely impossible for a company like mine, which works with suppliers who all know their farmers personally, to know the other farmers who grow or gather the wonderful fruits and stevia we use unless we source everything literally ourselves, import it ourselves, and force the blenders to blend our own proprietary ingredients.

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