Business Expansion Insights in the Nutraceutical Industry with Christian Merup at Wellma

Episode Overview

Episode Topic:

In this episode of NutraPreneur, get into the realm of Quality Wellness in Nutraceuticals, with with Christian Merup at Wellma, exploring the pivotal role quality plays in the nutraceutical industry. With the global wellness market ever-expanding, ensuring the highest standards of quality is not just a regulatory requirement but a foundational pillar for success and consumer trust. This discussion unravels the complexities and challenges of maintaining quality wellness in nutraceuticals, spotlighting innovative approaches and best practices that set industry benchmarks.

Lessons You’ll Learn:

Throughout the episode, gain invaluable insights into the principles of maintaining and enhancing quality wellness in nutraceuticals. The episode sheds light on the importance of rigorous quality control measures, the impact of supply chain management on product quality, and the strategies for innovation without compromising wellness standards. Learn from the frontline experiences of industry leaders on navigating regulatory landscapes, anticipating market trends, and fostering a culture of excellence in quality wellness within the nutraceutical sector.

About Our Guest:

Christian Merup, CEO of Wellma Group, is our esteemed guest, bringing a wealth of knowledge and experience in the nutraceutical industry. With a vision focused on enhancing quality wellness in nutraceuticals, Christian has led Wellma Group to become a beacon of innovation and quality assurance. Under his leadership, the company has embraced cutting-edge technologies and sustainable practices to ensure the delivery of premium nutraceutical products. Christian’s entrepreneurial journey and commitment to excellence make him a compelling voice in discussions on quality wellness.

Topics Covered:

This episode covers a a wide array of topics crucial to understanding and achieving quality wellness in nutraceuticals. From the foundational importance of quality control and assurance in manufacturing processes to the challenges of sourcing and sustainability in the supply chain, we explore the multifaceted dimensions of quality wellness. Additionally, we delve into the innovations driving the nutraceutical industry forward, the role of regulatory bodies, and the future of wellness and health supplementation. Join us as we uncover the strategies and insights that contribute to the elevation of quality wellness standards in the nutraceutical field.

Our Guest: Christian Merup- Merging Sustainability with Quality Wellness in Nutraceuticals

Episode Transcript: 

Christian Merup: Quality, as we discussed, that’s always one thing that needs to be top of mind. When you are in this industry. You have to be critical when you’re producing things that people will eat. Right now, when you’re based in Europe, you see a lot of supply chain disturbances, especially from products and ingredients coming from China. You need to be proactively de-risking that and look at alternative sources for some of your key ingredients, and also be clever in how you stock up some critical ingredients without binding up too much capital.

Bethany Jolley: Welcome to NutraPreneur, the Nutra Industry podcast. I’m your host, food scientist, and nutraceuticals consultant, Bethany Jolley. Each episode, we’ll be exploring what it takes to thrive in the nutraceutical industry. From conversations with successful nutraceutical entrepreneurs to venture capitalists to tech executives whose innovations are reshaping the nutraceuticals industry, we explore the innovations and trends that are shaping the next generation of nutraceutical businesses. Welcome back to NutraPreneur, your go-to platform for groundbreaking insights in the nutraceutical realm. I’m Bethany, your host. Today we have the pleasure of hosting Christian Merup, CEO of Wellma Group. Wellma, a European trailblazer and wellness and nutrition, excels in nutraceuticals and pharmaceutical development and manufacturing. Known for its entrepreneurial ecosystem, Wellma is making waves with its expansive growth and specialized production capabilities. Welcome, Christian, it’s so great to have you today.

Christian Merup: Hi Bethany, thanks a lot for having me.

Bethany Jolley: First, I think it’d be great if you could just enlighten us about the founding vision of Wellma and your journey to becoming a CEO.

Christian Merup: More than happy to I mean, we are building a leading producer and developer of nutraceuticals, a niched pharma, and we have the aim to become the partner of choice for B2C actors in the industry. We do this through investing in the best entrepreneurial companies and offering specialized capabilities, and that together create a leading customer offering. With that, we get the advantages of being large, but at the same time, we keep the entrepreneurial speed, flexibility, and fast decision-making so that we can be very fast and reactive to what our customer wants. With that, we’re building the leading customer offering within nutraceutical production, and we’re improving people’s lives all over the planet, which is our vision.

Bethany Jolley: That’s great. Wellma really stands out with its unique ecosystem of entrepreneurs and companies. How has this contributed to your significant growth and expansion?

Christian Merup: It has contributed a lot. Together with the companies we built, the customer offering of the future, and has clearly accelerated the growth. Then together we have a wide assortment or a wide product assortment. We can do anything from tablets, hard capsules, powder coating, soft gel, sports gels, and gummies. But at the same time, we also have niche capabilities. Most of our sites are only doing one thing, which they specialize in and are very efficient in. So we get the advantages of having a full-service offering or a wide offering but at the same time specialized capabilities. And then we also invest in entrepreneurial people that are dedicated to flexibility towards customers. You can have fast decision-making, short lead times, and then follow and work with customers for a quite long time. By being part of Wellma, our companies get access to more customers through the network that we have in the group, and that has accelerated the group, the growth. It should be said, that we’re quite picky in which companies that we bring into Wellma, and we also want to make sure that you bring some capabilities and that we also can make sure to help them grow even further. But being part of the idea is that you get access to additional customers and additional markets. A big part of our growth is coming from us building an ecosystem together, and then you also get other opportunities. We get bigger volumes, you can get better purchasing prices. Also, it’s a lot of knowledge that different entrepreneurs sit with that you can share within the ecosystem. So it’s a lot of knowledge sharing within there as well. So I would say we had a great 2023, again, 2022 was also awesome. It goes really well, and I would say that the ecosystem, together, with us investing in really good companies is the foundation for that.

Bethany Jolley: It sounds like that strategy has a lot of advantages and with your diverse production capabilities. So you said each facility specializes in one thing like tablets or capsules or powders or liquids. How does Wellma ensure top-notch quality and innovation in its manufacturing processes?

Christian Merup: Quality, of course, is central in everything we do, and it has to be with the products that we are producing. We only work with investing companies. That takes quality very seriously. We only work with partners that have certain quality certifications. We also have agreed with the quality promise within Wellma that all entrepreneurs have signed, which stipulates how we together work with quality, how we work with suppliers, and how we work at our sites. This is very important, and we’re also very clear with that, with having new companies joining that. This is what we expect. On top of this, we also do recurring Wellma audits at all sites to ensure that our quality is really strong and we can be proactive if there is anything that needs to be done that has worked really well. Quality score in what we do regarding innovation, and then we often help our customers to develop formulas or formulations through our labs that we have at the different sites. Given the specialized development capabilities we have given the focus, I think we have a very strong proposition there, and we do many new formulations every year. That’s a very important factor why customer likes to work with us.

Bethany Jolley: Wellma does have multiple production sites across Europe, so what strategies have you employed to maintain consistency and quality across all of these different locations?

Christian Merup: Then it comes back to that. We only partner up with quality, with sites that take quality very seriously and have certain certifications. We have this agreed quality promise and then the recurrent. Quality audits that we do. So this is a very highly prioritized topic that we make sure to excel at. Putting quality at at core, I think it’s the key thing to do.

Bethany Jolley: Can you discuss how Wellma’s partnership with systematic growth has played a pivotal role in your company’s development?

Christian Merup: From the start, systematic growth founded Wellma. They have a lot of experience from building leading entrepreneurial industrial groups in different markets, and they’ve done that several times before in different industries. Their experience has, of course, been extremely valuable. They are entrepreneurs themselves from the beginning, and they understand how to create a professional company while keeping the entrepreneurial energy and fast decision-making and speed. They built several European and global leaders before, and of course, it’s immensely helpful to have that experience and knowledge. I would dare to say that we wouldn’t been where we are if it wouldn’t have been for their experience and knowledge.

Bethany Jolley: This episode is brought to you by nutrapayments.com. If your business needs credit card processing that fully integrates with most major neutral software platforms, offers the lowest industry prices, and has features like recurring billing, zero-dollar trials, and chargeback prevention then visit us at nutrapayments.com for a free online quote. I know the European market is quite competitive. So how does Walmart differentiate itself, especially in terms of customer service and product offerings?

Christian Merup: We have this wide service offering. As I mentioned before, we do tablets, capsules, powders, coating, gels, pellets, granulation, and packaging. No matter how you want it packaged, we have the wide service offering that customers want. At the same time, we have the niche specialty within each of the fields and I think it’s very few that can offer that. I think our growth tells the story about that. If you come to us, we can help you with whatever you need help with along your journey. At the same time, all our sites are, as I said, led by ambitious entrepreneurs. We can work with small orders. We can work with big orders. We are flexible. We are always making sure to put in what the customer wants first, and we have short lead times, and we want to build long-term relationships with our key customers. That has been very appreciated. Quality, as we discussed, I’ve always put that at the core you can trust quality when you work with Wellma. We are also backed by technology to ensure fast and efficient processes and make fast replies, for example, to customers. I think all in all, that creates a very strong customer proposition that also separates from what others can do. We have a European footprint, but we also have a global reach. Our strong growth is clear proof that it is a strong customer proposition.

Bethany Jolley: Looking towards the future, what exciting projects or innovations can we expect from Wellma?

Christian Merup: I think it will happen a lot in 2024, so I think it’s going to be a really exciting year. Hopefully, we will continue to add some of the best companies in Europe to expand our capabilities further and expand our market presence. I do think there will happen some interesting things during the year on that front. Then we’ll continue to work on improving and creating an even stronger proposition for our customers together. We have already got a lot of collaboration, helping our companies to grow, and I think we will do that even further. Having more customers, seeing the opportunities with Wellma, and helping to supply them together. So I think that is one area that we come far. I think that will continue to accelerate during 2024. We’ll also make our collaboration stronger and our proposition stronger. There are many things where you have opportunities from that point of view, both on ingredients and packaging material, and that can when you order that in larger volumes, we can create an even stronger proposition at the end to the customers. There also will happen several other things. One thing that we think is very important is the environment. We will launch our first ESG agenda, try to take the lead within that field in the industry as well, and we will work to see how we can help, given where we are in the value chain, to make an important stand for how important that is, for what we can do from where we are in the industry, and we will continue to evolve digital elements of our supply chain. We will launch a new website very soon. Then we also do several meet-ups every year where all our entrepreneurs come together, and which is a great forum to share experiences, help collaborate, help each other grow. So I think 2024 has started well. I expect that it will continue to do that and it will happen a lot of things on the Wellma side.

Bethany Jolley: You’re a leader in the nutraceutical industry, but there are also challenges that come along with that. So what challenges do you foresee and how is Wellma preparing to address those challenges?

Christian Merup: It’s of course, always important to look at the horizon and see what could happen and mitigate risks. Quality, as we discussed, that’s always one thing that needs to be top of mind. When you are in this industry. You have to be critical when you’re producing things that people will eat. So that is why it has such a high priority at Wellma. I think right now, when you’re based in Europe, you see a lot of supply chain disturbances, especially from products and ingredients coming from China. You need to be proactively de-risking that and look at alternative sources for some of your key ingredients, and also be clever in how you stock up some critical ingredients without binding up too much capital. That’s something that we are looking at looking even further out. Our market is going very well, but the competition will increase because of that because it’s an attractive place to be. I think that makes it very important to always focus on the quality of your proposition and to make sure to stand out there, to build long-term relationships with your customers and not things to short term. That is exactly what we’re trying to do with Wellman. That’s why we focus so much on long-term relationships and building a very strong customer proposition at the core, coming back to sustainability. I think that’s not only for our industry, it’s for the world as a whole. That’s an area that is becoming more and more important for us. At Wellma, we see, given our size, given where we are, we have the responsibility to take leadership within this. I think this is one area that you need to succeed in to build a sustainable business for the future. We have decided to launch an ESG agenda and have a clear vision of where we want to be in a few y and work towards that and make steady improvements. I think those are important things for everyone in this industry.

Bethany Jolley: For emerging entrepreneurs who are in the wellness and nutrition sectors, what advice can you offer based on your experiences at Wellma?

Christian Merup: It’s a fantastic space that is growing very well with many opportunities, but at the same time, you have a large responsibility to be a producer of supplements, both to your consumers who will eat it, and to your people who are working with you, and also to your customers that are growing together with you. I think it’s important to always put quality at the center, build strong capabilities, and scale at the pace that you can keep up with, and then it is a large responsibility and many are dependent on you, so make sure to do it at the right pace. But if you do, this industry is fantastic. You have the opportunity to improve a lot of people’s lives with what you produce, and you work with exciting brands and customers and help them to succeed. If you do that, I think it’s an exciting industry to be in, and then I can offer to all entrepreneurs if they want, just go to our website, reach out to me, and I’m happy to share any advice that I can.

Bethany Jolley: That’s great. I agree it’s an exciting industry, but I think a lot of people are nervous to dive into it. As we wrap up another insightful episode of NutraPreneur. Having delved into the innovative world of Wellma Group, a huge thank you to Christian Merup for sharing the remarkable journey and vision of Wellma. For those who are interested in learning more about Wellma Group or exploring their diverse products, visit our website for all of the necessary links. Remember to subscribe, share your thoughts, and join our social media community to stay on top of the latest in nutraceutical innovations. Until next time, keep pushing the boundaries and the world of wellness and nutrition. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of NutraPreneur. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and better yet, leave us a review as it helps us grow the show.