Most of the food, personal care and pharmaceutical products are derived from various plants that are derived from Botanicals.
As per the statistics provided by the Euromonitor International in the year 2012 around 97.5% of botanical bubbly items of 2.6 million tons were used for food and other beverage products.
Research has established the benefits of herbs and spices. Plenty of global opportunities in the field of botanicals have opened up.
Recently, The Journal of Clinical Nutrition has published that consumption of green tea is greatly associated with lower level of risk for few fatal diseases like cognitive impairment, stroke and osteoporosis among Japanese consumers.
Due to consumer’s awareness about the use of various traditional medications with herbs and plants, major uses of botanical items have started in the Asia-Pacific region.
As per the statistics available with us, Asia-Pacific region posted 9.6% of CAGR over the period of 2006-2011 and reached to 1.2 million tons during the year 2011, which is almost two times the usage in the North America.
As far as application of botanical items in the Western Europe is concerned, it is at a much lower level of 373,000 tons.
That is because the applications of botanicals particularly in the products related to food and drink within European Union is very tightly regulated as compared to North America as well as Asia-Pacific region.
Hence, consumers too are less aware about various health-related benefits obtained from plants and therefore they are less inclined to go for any plant-based products.
Opportunities of botanicals
For obtaining various foods and beverages, botanicals have been very successful because of their natural label. A majority of botanical items are used in various soft drinks like chamomile and lavender etc.
Many other relaxation beverages also contain plenty of botanical items to provide flavors e.g. rosehip, camomile, lemon and lavender in order to evoke calming sense.
Green tea is one of botanical product that has got plenty of attention from consumers as it is perceived to be providing a number of health benefits.
Tea is one of the major items and its global usage is above 50,000 tons. Sale of green tea in the format of RTD is considered to be one of the highly successful products and its sale has increased by 25% from 2007 to 2012. The sale of $13.7 billion in the year 2012 speaks the truth.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Many other botanical products like seaweed, grape seed extracts, various herbs and spices, herbal tea, different fruit juices can provide a billion-dollar market and the opportunities are huge.
