‘Nutrilite betting big on emerging markets’

CALIFORNIA: Michigan-based Amway Corporation, which produces vitamin, mineral and dietary supplements under the brand — Nutrilite — is betting big on emerging markets including India to source organic produce. Currently over 40 per cent is produced at its company-owned farms located at California, Washington, Mexico and Brazil, while the remaining 60 per cent comes from farmers certified by Amway.

“As part of our strategic growth plan, we have decided not to expand our own farms for now. We will look at sourcing from individual farmers, specifically from emerging markets such as India, for various crops and concentrates that would be used in our products. The percentage of organic produce from these farmers could increase to over 80 per cent or so over the next few years,” J Peter Debus, Supervisor, Lakeview Farm, Amway told Express.

Some of the organic crops include spinach, parsley and carrots. Amway provides technical inputs to farmers including growing, harvesting and processing plants organically. It also certifies each farm with — Nutricert — a certificate indicating that the farm has complied with certain internationally-accepted quality control norms while growing crops.

While some of these Nutricert farms send produce directly, some farms even process the produce and send the concentrate to be used in the production of vitamin and mineral supplements.

According to Amway, which is widely known for its multilevel marketing model across the globe, organic farming increases the average yield of the crop by 16 to 18 times.

Currently, China constitues the biggest market, generating more than 60 percent of its overall revenue followed by the US and the UK.  Emerging markets including Brazil, China, India and Indonesia together form a major chunk of its annual sales as of March, 2010.