Tips to simplify your Pharma, Nutra procurement & enhance your overall business productivity?

Like any other business, Pharmaceutical & Nutraceutical companies which develop finished formulation for a specific application, they know that new & recurring orders with enhanced capacities is the route for growth, moreover responsibility to deliver healthcare & treatment products on time is crucial for their dominance in a niche market. Procuring nutraceutical powders at competitive rates in a timely manner and ensuring quality of the same is key to business sucess.

Manufacturing and supplying organizations face numerous types of hurdles from procuring nutraceutical powder to regulatory compliance under Drug and Food Law, packaging & logistics losses are common, so is entire production batch loss due to canceled orders along with quality & contamination occurrences which are quite frequent.

Below are tips to simply the process of different types of material purchase for your Pharma & Nutra business or in short “effective procuring nutraceutical powder”, there by minimizing losses and increasing productivity of your business overall.

MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity) should be what your formulation’s minimum weighing ingredient says & not what your raw material supplier says-

Procuring nutraceutical powder and purchasing the same in Bulk is cheaper, this has been the rule for raw material procurement since long and accepted world wide, however your formulation blend might only take 5 kg of one ingredient and be half a tonne in total capacity, hence purchasing 25 kg bag for that one ingredient is investing unnecessarily in 20 Kgs, not only this but also decreasing the shelf life of that extra 20 Kg, paying extra maintenance cost on it & risking its contamination too.

It would be smart to deal with suppliers who UNDERSTAND why you would only need small quantities. A supplier who cannot understand the reason behind small quantities can certainly not deliver you post sale services & the level of responsibility & commitment a manufacturing facility shoulders in the Healthcare sector.

Go for Pre-Mix Blend and or Semi Finished preparations rather than procuring nutraceutical powder or ingredients from multiple sources-

As mentioned earlier, meeting timelines in Heath & dietary supplement industry is equally important than confirming quality standards, Let say you are making a Multi-Vitamin Protein Powder, you would need a base, all vitamins, minerals, additives as per fssai rules, packaging material, soft-gel bags etc.

Many companies still follow the traditional route of procuring nutraceutical powders, where in they will take quotes from multiple suppliers, order MOQ’s of individual ingredients based on affordability and not on end product metrics, post placing purchase orders, track the status of all ingredients individually there by increasing the risk in damages dues to transportation, it is nearly impossible to get all the materials in manufacturing facility in the same time, once you physically acquire them then individual testing for all these compounds and if any were to fail then you repeat the entire process again, or you put time to identify another suitable source (if anything your timeline shift, shifts & shift further to deliver your end product to consumer).

It would be smarter & a whole lot cheaper if you directly procure nutraceutical powders in form of either the pre-mix or semi finished blend, this way you minimize a lot of time purchasing so many ingredients from multiple sources, there by making time to work on more orders & ultimately increasing your production capacity, another big advantage is that you can test for all ingredients in your blend & ensure further quality by finalizing your product by additives so that standards are met and your industry goodwill is maintained & also you reduce your risk of taking finished formulation from your supplier & increasing your chance of complete batch being destroyed due to quality issues.

Finally you get an option to finalize the preparation in the end, if there are any concentration variations or formulation changes.

Better & transparent post purchase services-

Once you have procured your nutraceutical powders and your raw ingredients then your supplier has limited services that you can avail, either take the material or return it back or perhaps replacement as per agreed terms, however if you were to take premix or a blend then you get the option to request addition of ingredients at the source of mixing itself.

PROCUREMENT OF INGREDIENTS IS NOT JUST BUYING PHYSICAL SUBSTANCES, IT IS MORE OF BUYING EXPERIENCES AND PROMISES. ENHANCE YOUR BUSINESS SIGNIFICANTLY BY MAKING SMART PURCHASING DECISIONS!

 

Ruchi Khanna

Ruchi is the Formulation Catalyst & Bio-Sales Head at M/s Rass Biosolution Private Limited.