Hain launches veggie juices containing lutein

By Dale Buss

Hain Celestial Food Group yesterday [June 12] launched a new line of vegetable-juice products that contain Kemin Foods’ lutein and that heavily promote the ingredient’s role in improving eye health, including on the packaging, in consumer brochures and in a video documentary.

With its new Hain Pure Foods Veggie Juice and Carrot Juice, packaged in 32-ounce aseptic containers similar to those for soy milk, the Melville, N.Y.-based natural-foods giant is seeking to create a new niche segment alongside category competitors such as V8 and refrigerated vegetable-juice brands including Odwalla and Samantha, Tina Fabiano, assistant brand manager for Hain Pure Foods, told New Nutrition Business. Suggested retail prices for the products will range from $2.99 to $3.29.

“Consumers are seeking nutrition and trying to get all the nutrients they need, and veggie juice is a great place to get it,” Fabiano says. “It’s an excellent source of Vitamins A and C and calcium.”

But the real story about these products, Fabiano agrees, is how they position lutein. The products are fortified with FloraGlo lutein that is manufactured by Kemin Foods, a Des Moines, Iowa-based company that is managing to include FloraGlo in more and more new products. Hain executives see their emphasis on eye health via lutein as the most promising way to differentiate their new Veggie Juice and Carrot Juice from existing products.

“You can find lutein naturally in leafy green vegetables, but most people don’t get the proper amount,” Fabiano says. “Yet somewhere around 50 percent of the general population understand lutein” and its role in mitigating eye problems such as age-related macular degeneration. Its presence in a growing number of vitamins and supplements also helps familiarize Americans with lutein’s role in nutrition.

Hain is heavily emphasizing the presence of lutein in the new products. A spot on the packaging emphasizes it. Point-of-sale materials in stores, such as a shelf liner designed to reach consumers right at the spot where the Hain Pure Foods juices sit on the shelves, tout it. And consumers who call Hain’s consumer-affairs numbers will be sent a Hain-sponsored documentary called Eye to Eye, which discusses the problems of macular degeneration and eye health in general.

A detailed cases-study of Kemin Foods’ successful commercialisation of lutein can be found
in The Food & Health Marketing Handbook , published by New Nutrition Business in March this year.