Our speaker on Tuesday 14th was our own Roger Gower.
Roger addressed us on his business Clever Nutrition.
The Clever Nutrition business derives from Roger’s involvement with the Food Bowl, a trial kitchen located in Mangere adjacent to the airport.
The Food Bowl is available to producers of food products to trial new products and the production of those new products in an environment which replicates an industrial production line to see if the product can be made and supplied in the quantities that the fast-moving consumer goods market requires.
As a consequence, the Food Bowl is an important piece of the innovation ecosystem.
The lessons that Roger has identified with the Food Bowl is there is a break in the chain between product development, by entities small and large, and getting the product to market and this is where Clever Nutrition fits into the scheme of things.
The point of Clever Nutrition as explained by Rogers is to short-circuit the problems that large companies have with innovation and product development. Most large companies undertake innovation and new product development but that process is wrapped up with input from external sources, different players in the process having different agendas, the need to report and document every step taken and obtain for every step taken management approval.
In addition to the work described by Roger Clever Nutrition also sells its own product. It acquired the former food supplement business operated by Douglas Pharmaceuticals.
The business manufactures and markets 2 brands of supplements. One product focused upon mothers and babies, Puria, and the other Altrex whose focus is older people with dietary issues including dysphagia (the inability to swallow) and also to provide nutritional support for older people with Cachexia, renal failure and colitis and mucostis.
Clever Nutrition is also undertaking ongoing research partnering with universities and the food industry. Roger told us of two current areas of work, the first with Berkely University looking at fermenting a sugar contained in breast milk which assists with infant development, and on a more prosaic basis working with the meat industry to use off-cuts that would otherwise be discarded to develop protein powders for general use.
As always when a member is the speaker there was a lot of interest, so Rogers address was well received.