Columbia Nutritional

“We’re also looking at investing in a specialized infrastructure for expanding probiotic manufacturing capabilities,” he adds. “The probiotic market is growing rapidly. We are in some early stage talks with a strategic partner that could help catapult our sophistication and knowledge in processing and manufacturing finished-dose, probiotic formulas at a higher level of standards. We do currently manufacture products in that area, anyway, but this will catapult us to another level of support and sophistication. It’s an exciting area that we’re investing in, internally. “The other major investment I’m looking at over the course of the next couple of years is our laboratory testing capabilities. That is a big portion of our processing times - making sure that ingredients meet our specifications from a testing perspective. So, we are making an investment in adding microbial testing. We’re bringing in bio- luminex; it’s a rapid test process. We’ll use that for both our raw material incoming testing, as well as our finished product testing to help speed up that process and get a little more control. Over time, we’re looking at making even more investments in our lab capabilities to test for heavy metals and, eventually, more analytical and assay tests, as well.” In closing, Becker touts Columbia Nutritional’s advantages in a rapidly growing and highly competitive marketplace: “Columbia has had a long, successful history and a lot of experience in the industry, working with a variety of different products and customers in terms of product needs,” he states. “We are focused on ensuring compliance from a quality and regulatory perspective. We’re very focused on servicing the customer. Finally, we’re well-positioned to grow with a lot of capacity for growth; we’re able to bring on new products and customers and put them into our manufacturing schedule.” PREFERRED VENDORS n BioCaps Enterprise, Inc. www.biocaps.net n Jiaherb www.jiaherbinc.com