Vitamins, Diet and Sports Nutrition

SLOUGH, England — The battle for Schiff Nutrition is on. Reckitt Benckiser on Friday commenced its previously announced tender offer to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Schiff Nutrition — a provider of branded vitamins, nutrition supplements and nutrition bars in the United States and elsewhere — for $42 per share in cash, or approximately $1.4 billion.

MORRISTOWN, N.J. — Bayer Healthcare on Wednesday announced that they have teamed up with Vitamin Angels to launch 10 Million Stronger, a charitable initiative aimed at delivering vitamin A to 10 million children worldwide who are suffering from vitamin A deficiency.

ST. LOUIS — People with diabetes often develop clogged arteries that cause heart disease, and new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that low vitamin D levels are to blame. In a study published Nov. 9 in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, the researchers reported that blood vessels are less like to clog in people with diabetes who get adequate vitamin D. But in patients with insufficient vitamin D, immune cells bind to blood vessels near the heart, then trap cholesterol to block those blood vessels.

WASHINGTON — The Natural Products Association last week launched an industry effort to help those directly affected by Hurricane Sandy through the creation of the NPA Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund. All donations to the fund can be made to the Natural Products Foundation at NaturalProductsFoundation.org/Sandy. 

ALLEGAN. Mich. — Business for OTC store brands is expected to boom in the coming year, Perrigo chairman and CEO Joseph Papa told analysts discussing the private-label manufacturer's first-quarter results during a conference call Wednesday, even as the growth rate across the entire OTC category slows. "What we are seeing though, is the continued acceleration of store brand as being the reason why we're seeing the growth in our OTC category. For us to have a 9.4% growth in our OTC category, we think is a strong indication," Papa said. 

EDGEWOOD, Md. — Nutramax Laboratories recently announced the defeat of a class action lawsuit brought against the company in a California court. In April, Nutramax was named in a class action regarding its CosaminDS Joint Health Supplement. Plaintiffs claimed the glucosamine/chondroitin supplement did not work in relieving joint pain as advertised. 



Target and CVS are some of the first retailers to group adult multivitamins and supplements available in gummy format into one 4-ft. set. The idea is to make shopping vitamins and supplements easier. For the 12 weeks ended Sept. 9, SymphonyIRI Group tabulated $202 million in sales of multivitamins, up slightly by 0.8%, across food, drug and mass (excluding Walmart).

The opportunity for weight loss certainly hasn’t gone away — sales of diet-aid liquids were up 12.8% to $1.2 billion for the 52 weeks ended Sept. 9 across food, drug and mass (excluding Walmart), according to SymphonyIRI. And due to the temporary absence of GlaxoSmithKline’s Alli — unavailable because of a raw-ingredient sourcing issue — sales of diet-aid tablets are down with a 7% decline to a dollar base of 
$205.4 million. 
Alli had been removed from the market in March due to the third-party supply issue and returned in late June.