"IFF is an exciting company to be a part of. We have the opportunity to help consumers prioritize their health and wellbeing by delivering science-backed health products to brand owners from food products to dietary supplements or specialty nutrition."

A History of Science & Creativity

Sebastien Guery, Vice President, IFF Health: The first of IFF’s parent companies was headshot of man established in 1889, but its history of putting science and creativity to work can be traced back even further. In 1883, Stafford Allen and Charles May, a druggist and herb grower, joined forces to produce pure drugs in an era when sawdust was a routine ingredient on the pharmacy shelf. Nearly a century later, a merger between two global businesses allowed the company—renamed IFF—to become an industry leader in food, beverage, health, biosciences and scent. With our four business divisions—Nourish, Scent, Pharma Solutions and Health & Biosciences—we’re able to partner with customers across multiple industries, from food to pharmaceuticals, to bring highly innovative solutions to the market. I’m the Vice President of IFF Health. This business unit develops, markets and sells probiotics, natural plant extracts and biotech-based ingredients, used in dietary supplements, functional food, infant and elderly nutrition, and more. Our customers benefit from our wealth of regulatory, application, and formulation expertise, as well as our in-depth market knowledge and advanced biotechnology capabilities. Mark Wright Headshot
Mark Wright, President, Health Wright Products—An IFF Company: Earlier this year, IFF announced that it entered an agreement to acquire Health Wright Products, LLC (HWP), leader in formulation and capsule manufacturing for the dietary supplement industry. I am the president of HWP, and I co-founded the company with my wife in 1995. The acquisition brings our formulation and finished format capabilities to IFF Health’s probiotics, natural extracts and botanical businesses, for increased product innovation and customization.

Highlights from IFF Health

Guery: As a whole, IFF has a unique set of ingredients and expertise that can change the world for the better. We’re building on our heritage of strong customer focus, product innovation and cutting-edge science, from formulation to ingredient discovery and development, with the goal of delivering sustainable growth. Within IFF Health, we offer one of the broadest portfolios of ingredients—from live microbes to natural plant extracts—which are formulated into innovative formats for the Health and Wellness industry.
Wright: At HWP, we manufacture custom formulations and deliver encapsulation and packaging services, to meet the industry’s precise requirements for probiotic and dietary supplement products. Quality, service, and value have been the driving principles in our commitment to exceeding customers’ expectations. As a global industry leader, we leverage innovation, technology, experience, and capacity to provide better health by encapsulating excellence. Our newly combined capabilities with IFF Health allow us to produce exciting, next-generation products that reflect the business’ commitment to quality, safety, science, and innovation.

Leadership Focus

Guery: My leadership focus is centered around three key elements: the market’s needs, our people, and high-quality science. In our business, it’s fundamental to not only focus on incremental innovations to fill an immediate unmet market need, but also to understand the long-term market and consumer trends to inform our innovation organization and prioritize our investments. All this, with the goal to best help customers stay ahead of the curve.
Second, at IFF, we’re all about our people. We need to ensure that our talent is actively nurtured and challenged with opportunities to grow in the business and across the company. Lastly, our portfolio and investment decisions are largely informed by robust scientific research to maintain our leading position as an innovator in the health, nutrition, and biosciences space.
Wright: Since founding HWP, the core focus has always been to put the customer first, by exceeding their expectations in quality, service, and value. Although our capabilities have rapidly expanded, another philosophy we’ve always had is to do one thing and do it well. Now that we’re a part of IFF, we’re staying within our core competency, but also creating new areas of growth within the industry we know best.

Company Differentiators

Guery: Early in 2021, we brought together two highly complementary firms: IFF and DuPont’s Nutrition & Biosciences (N&B). The combination of portfolios created a global leader in high-value ingredients and solutions across the Food & Beverage (F&B), Health & Wellness and Home & Personal care markets—which provides a great value prop for customers.
IFF Health is a unique player in the health space with our newly expanded capabilities—including decades of technical expertise and a broad portfolio of HOWARU® probiotic strains, botanicals, and specialty ingredients to enable our customers to launch new and healthy products with clinically substantiated ingredients. Adding in HWP business’ capabilities marks an exciting time for IFF.
Wright: HWP is one of the largest capsule manufacturers in the country. We built our facility to develop a variety of supplements, with a specific focus on probiotics. We have a 165,000 square-foot manufacturing space, with state-of-the-art encapsulation suites and tightly controlled humidity and temperatures for probiotic manufacturing. We’re in a great position to support IFF Health in delivering effective, customized formulations and finished formats to brands.

Making an Impact

Guery: IFF is an exciting company to be a part of. We have the opportunity to help consumers prioritize their health and wellbeing by delivering science-backed health products to brand owners from food products to dietary supplements or specialty nutrition. For example, our Litesse® polydextrose fiber actively helps brands reduce the sugar content in their products or our clinically substantiated probiotic portfolio, so that HOWARU® can further support consumers’ health in the dietary supplement space.
Additionally, IFF is committed to practicing sustainability, by using renewable energy and fewer natural resources, to minimize carbon footprint. For example, IFF’s ingredients Go-Less® Men and SoyLife® Complex were recently verified as Upcycled Certified™. To achieve the Upcycled Certified™ seal, both ingredients underwent a lengthy evaluation and approval process, to ensure they reflect the Upcycled Certified™ Standard, which requires that ingredients contain at least 95% of materials and byproducts from food production.
Wright: Our HWP team provides the missing piece between science and technology, to help customers develop the right formulation with the proper ingredients and packaging formats. We build the final unit that ends up in the consumers’ hands. When we’re bringing billions of capsules to market per year, we’re correspondingly improving the health of the world’s consumers.

Recent Developments

Guery: We’re incredibly excited that HWP is now part of our company. We have a unique opportunity with our joint capabilities to develop and manufacture innovative and complex formulations—especially probiotic solutions—for the industry’s most trusted brands. In parallel, we keep advancing a strong R&D pipeline of innovative ingredients as well as the development of new food and beverage formats including our ingredients.
Wright: We have worked with IFF for over 20 years, but we’re excited to now be an IFF company. Because of this partnership, we’ll be able to develop new customized solutions and formats for a broader base of customers. Also, we’re investing in our facilities, adding new capabilities of stick packs and sachets to help grow our business and improve the industry.

Breakthroughs

Guery: I was originally from the pharmaceutical industry, but began reading about the use of probiotics for specific health benefits, and became fascinated by the gut microbiome and its potential to transform health and wellness. More specifically, I find it mind boggling that the microbes living in our gut are so intertwined—from gut or immune health to impacting our behaviors through the gut-brain axis. It has been a privilege to work in this industry and drive innovation in this exciting space.
Wright: We often hear people say, “You are what you eat,” and it turns out that saying is true—it’s important for us to pay attention to what’s going into our bodies. My passion for nutrition and encouraging younger generations to prioritize their health has helped motivate my success in the industry, as I’m constantly seeking solutions to help others improve and maintain their health and wellbeing.

Words of Wisdom

Guery: In the natural products industry, we have a huge responsibility to ensure everything we do is high-quality and effective. We have a duty to honor the promise we make, to our customers and consumers, that our ingredients are safe and can help them lead a healthier life moving forward. When you make that promise, you need to make sure you’re doing everything you can to keep it.
Wright: Our industry is in a unique position to help improve consumer’s health. Our biggest challenge is overcoming perception and pharma—we’re not drugs, trying to fix something that’s broken. In the natural products industry, we’re here to supplement consumers’ lives and help boost their overall wellbeing. Also, quality must always come first. Products should be backed by science with well-founded health claims. When we continue to put the highest quality products in consumers’ hands, we improve the industry as a whole.