Valio and Oriola undertake exceptional joint development of a Gefilus® brand application

Oriola is part of Oriola-KD Group, a leading pharmaceutical retail & wholesale and healthcare trade player.

Oriola delivers products and services covering all areas of the healthcare sector and the company’s Consumer Health unit is a marketing and sales organisation for e.g. pharmacies, retail chains, health food and sports nutrition outlets, distributing its own and partners’ products. Oriola is also one of Finland’s leading nutritional supplement suppliers and Oriola KD Group owns a significant number of pharmacies in Sweden and Russia.

Partner perspectives

Valio’s Kalle Leporanta, Export Manager, Technology Sales

Valio started its Gefilus® capsules business in 1997 providing the effective ingredient and working with a contract manufacturer to create the end product. Oriola felt they would be even better placed to get this important product to consumers via their food supplement business and approached us.

We had the product and technology, Oriola has the resources in the sector so it’s a natural partnership. And a new departure for Valio as we don’t make a practice of licensing our brands but this has proven to be an exception well worth making. And of course in the hands of a trusted partner it can only strengthen the Gefilus® brand.

Oriola’s Jarkko Kiuru, Director, Consumer Health

We are seeking to expand our health and wellbeing business and leverage direct retailing through pharmacies. The sector tends to focus on e.g. food supplements such as Omega-3 products, but probiotics are fast gaining ground and with lactic acid applications growing we need to be involved.

So we were looking for an innovative solution and recognised Gefilus® brand capsules’ broader potential as a pharmacy product. The opportunity to combine Oriola’s pharmacy and food supplement expertise with Valio’s probiotics know-how came at just the right time.

Combining strengths and know-how

We were already familiar with Valio’s R&D expertise and are now more convinced than ever of its power as an engine for growth for Valio partners, too, Jarkko explains. The market wants products with verifiable health effects and the extensive published documentation on LGG® produced by the scientific community worldwide gives us just that. Valio’s well established Gefilus® brand is arguably stronger than LGG® itself and represents real value added.

We also felt that working with Valio would help generate portfolio innovation and our new Gefilus® drops with added vitamin D are an early example. They are an ideal delivery medium for infants and children, as well as for adults who simply don’t like capsules. The effective dose to build your resistance is just 5 drops a day.

Shared marketing experience, incidental brand promotion

Aside from standard advertising and conducting consumer group analysis, we work with e.g. mother and child clinics in developing communications channels to spread the word among medical professionals, Jarkko continues. Valio’s marketing experience and support in this area is remarkable and the authoritative weight carried by published studies gets the medical establishment onside.

More to come

Oriola is now selling Gefilus® brand capsules in Finland and the Baltics and studying the potential to launch them also in other nearby areas. And in sending the message about drops and capsules you are indirectly promoting e.g. Valio Gefilus® shots, so it’s win-win, Kalle adds.

www.oriola.com

www.gefiluskapselit.fi