Natural Products London

So Natural Products was two weeks ago in London. After the show it has been so busy that I have found no time to come back to the blog. As the pictures shows, also the show was busy and we had a lot of interesting discussions with clients. The most tangible result was that the Napapiiri Organics range of berry preserves will be available at Community Foods' Cash&Carry starting from the next price list in May. So it means there is a lot of work ahead to ensure they find their way to the shop shelves. At least reactions to tastings at NPE were very positive with the Sea Buckthorn preserve probably the best liked type. But there is a lot of communication to be done. What is cloudberry or sea buckthorn? How do you use the preserves? What are the benefits? All the berries in the Napapiiri range are arctic superberries that grow wild in Finland. All of them have great health benefits but people are of course not aware of them. For example wild bilberry from Finland contains 8 times more antocyanins and flavonoids than North American blueberry. This is the berry the Japanese pharmaceutical industry is buying for preparing eye-sight enhancing supplements. The Americans are making all the health claims but we have the real product! Also lingonberry - called also mountain cranberry - has much higher content of health benefitting substancies than North American cultivated cranberry. But all this needs to be communicated. A good source of information is the web site of Arctic Flavors.

An other new product we were presentig at NPE was Nordic Rape Seed Oil from Virgino. Virgino is a very high quality cold pressed oil that can be used for salad dressings as well as frying. The quality is now even better than it was earlier because Virgino has recently moved into new facilities and has new machinery for pressing the oil. What is special about the Virgino rape seed oil is that it is produced from turnip summer rape seed (Brassica rapa ssp oleifera) while most rape seed cultivars are Brassica napus cultivars. The English language makes no difference between the two species but let us call ours Nordic Rape Seed as it is hardly cultivated outside Finland anymore. The fatty acid composition of Nordic Rape Seed Oil is more favorable than in normal rape seed oil and by far more favorable than other major oils like olive oil or sunflower oil. It contains only 5% saturated fatty acids (the bad ones) and has Omega 3 and Omega 6 is perfect balance. But here again we have quite a task in communicating and differentiating. The goods news is that everyone at NPE who had the opportunity to taste Virgino was impressed. It should also be mentioned that all Finnish rape seed cultivars are 00-erusic acid cultivars (0% erisic acid) and GMO-free.