Chewing Gum Consultant

Professional Chewing gum industry meeting point

Philip Morris acquires Fertin Pharma 02/07/2021

Filed under: Market & Fairs — Joan Mestres @ 1:23 PM
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1st July 2021 brought important news to the chewing gum industry. The giant Philip Morris has acquired the Danish Fertin Pharma from EQT (which controlled 70% of the shares) and Bagen-Sorensen.

You can find information and details of the operation in many sources. I leave you here just a couple of links:

https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/2021-07-01/philip-morris-international-announces-agreement-to-acquire-fertin-pharma

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/philip-morris-buy-nicotine-gum-maker-fertin-pharma-push-smoke-free-products-2021-07-01/

Fertin has always been a reference when it comes to functional and pharmaceutical chewing gums. One of their strong points are the nicotin-containing products. This type of gums, used for smoke-cessation, fit well into the Philip Morris strategy of creating a smoke-free environment. Let’s see what the future brings to us in the market!

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Chewing gum for Eye-care! 29/05/2014

Filed under: New product — Joan Mestres @ 2:17 PM
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Confectionerynews.com published recently about a new type of gum developed by the Danish company FERTIN PHARMA.

It is called “Vision gum” and it contains Lutein, zinc and vitamins A, B2 and E. The gum was presented during the Vitafoods exhibition fair that took place in Geneva (Switzerland) from 6th until 8th May.

The company wants to be very careful bout the claims associated with this chewing gum, and states that it “helps maintain good vision” but in any case “cures bad vision”.

I must say that, as far as I know,  it is the first chewing gum going in the direction of “healthy vision”. There are and have been gums in the market with vitamins (Vitamin C is the most popular but there are products with A, E and others as well), but it is the first one that combines the vitamins with Lutein. So it is good to see the range of functional gums expanding.

I attach here the link to the article in case you want to read more about it.  Vision gum

 

Degradable chewing gum 04/04/2014

Filed under: Research — Joan Mestres @ 9:03 AM
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More news on this interesting topic have been published by confectionery news.com (see link).

Wrigley has filed a patent describing a new degradable gum. The way this is achieved is by formulating the gum base with “block polymers”. The company claims that the resulting product is more easily removed from surfaces such as sidewalks (in 20 seconds a high pressure hot water jet can remove more than 80% of the material)

According to wikipedia:

“Block copolymers comprise two or more homopolymer subunits linked by covalent bonds (4). The union of the homopolymer subunits may require an intermediate non-repeating subunit, known as a junction block. Block copolymers with two or three distinct blocks are called diblock copolymers and triblock copolymers, respectively.”

In this particular patent, the company uses polymers of at least 4 blocks composed of at east 2 different monomer systems.

The articles from confectionerynews.com mentions as well other companies that presented progresses on this controversial field of the chewing gum business (Mondelez, Revolymer, TNO, RSSL,  GumLink, Fertin Pharma, University College Cork) . I also posted in the past about those patents and inventions.

 

 

Chewing gum against common cold. 20/05/2013

Filed under: New product — Joan Mestres @ 12:47 PM
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Confectionerynews.com informs about a new gum designed by the Danish company Fertin which claims to enhance immunity and so preventing common cold.

The gum contains:

30mg of vitamin C

3,3 mg zinc

13,56 mg Echinacea

The first two ingredients have claims for immunity accepted by European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), but not the last one.

Fertin is the leading company worldwide in functional and pharmaceutical gum. They are fully specialized in this attractive niche market since many years and have done a lot of research and patents. In this case, this product is presented in the dry version, this is tabletted (compressed) gum instead of the extruded way. Tabletting gum has certain advantages (lower processing temperature, no interaction with water, etc.) versus the more traditional production method via extrusion. In general this is the most viable way for many functional gums because the tableting process is less aggressive to the sometimes fragile active ingredient.

Those of you that have been reading my web for a while know that I have a special interest on any functional gum that appears on the market and any research around that. So i am happy each time I can share one of these with you. You can read the article in this link

 

Chewing gum to keep a healthy heart. Resveratrol 27/06/2012

Filed under: New product — Joan Mestres @ 6:05 PM
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Have you heard of the “French Paradox”? This term is associated to the low heart disease occurence in France, even the diet in this country contains a high level of fat. It is claimed that one of the elements that can contribute to this fact is the red wine (consumed at relatively high levels in France), and more in particular, to one of the ingredients in this red wine: The resveratrol. This substance is a polyphenol with antioxidant properties.

Some months ago was launched to the US market by Cheiron Holdings a gum named “Heart Strong Gum™”. This product contains resveratrol from the firm Fluxome (www.fluxome.com).

Now this danish firm announces a partnership with another danish well-known firm in the gum industry, Fertin AS (www.fertin.com), to produce chewing gum containing resveratrol.

You can see more of this news on http://www.confectionerynews.com/Formulation/Fluxome-close-to-developing-resveratrol-chewing-gum-for-Europe

It is always a good sign that companies research and develop products with high added value. Chewing gums offering something else than just a nice chew and flavour are always welcome in the family. It seems that the chewing gum industry is not able to fully break the high wall between food and pharma (the main exception to this rule is the well-know Nicorette (www.nicorette.com), the chewing gum produced by Johnson & Johnson containing nicotine. In this case, resveratrol gum will not be a pharmaceutical product (the active has GRAS classification if the US) but a functional one.