Opalbond HQ is a hive of innovation with the whole team spending a great deal of time developing new and exciting products, working all year round with customers and suppliers. We like to think of ourselves as the blue sky innovators of the nutrition market.

The VMS (vitamin and mineral supplement) department is particularly focused on developing products which allow consumers to access more unique delivery systems for taking their food supplements. Indeed, working with a key supplier, we have developed more effervescent tablets with our partners than we would care to remember.  Many customers are keen to understand the process, why would you choose one ingredient over the other and what happens when?

In this two-part blog (more next month), I shall be exploring the questions we are often asked by customers less familiar with effervescent tablet manufacture. We start by looking at what impacts on the product from the brand owner’s perspective.

PART 1

Step 1: Your marketing strategy

This is critical because your target consumer, their socio demographic profile and buying patterns drives your product. You need to know what ingredients your products need to contain, and what price point you need to achieve. We can provide both a steer on marketing trends, opportunities and indeed gaps but ultimately the positioning of a perceived final product comes from the brand owner. Having met and discussed your brand, we begin to profile your consumer and understand what is required and how that might work within the technical feasibilities of manufacture of the product.

Step 2. Timing.

When do you want to launch? The market for rehydration focussed effervescent tablets for instance is summer, whereas detox and weight loss tend be the new year and immunity is Autumn. Typically our development process can take from 12 to 16 weeks or more if many changes are required during the process. Many products sell equally well all year round.

Step 3. Channel.

What is your route to market? Certain formulations, packaging and delivery systems suit different routes to market. E.g. in effervescent tablets you may need a printed shelf ready tray, a coloured lid to help shelf presence, metallic or embossed print to convey premium or quality and ‘stand out’. You may want the tube in a printed carton for more on-pack space. You might want to launch with individual tablet sachets (as samples) or packaging suitable for postal. We can advise on all of this.

Effervescent tablets require a particularly technical manufacturing process because of their hydroscopic nature. Opalbond have sold more than 40 million effervescent tablets each year and we are now in our tenth year of selling these products. We are undoubtedly one of the biggest suppliers of effervescent tablets to UK brand owners.

Next month Part 2 will detail the process of development of an effervescent tablet, making sure the product is exactly as you would like!