Who is Nutriset

This is the only company in the world 100% dedicated to specific food and food complement products for humanitarian aid. Michel Lescanne, a food engineer involved in humanitarian programmes, set up this French company in 1986. It is completely independent from any financial and industrial lobby. Nutriset was the first company to design and industrialize dairy food for the treatment of malnutrition (therapeutic milk). Since then it has been designing original products to respond to the needs in the field. Two of their emergency food products are plumpy’nut and Qbmix.

Around 3 or 4 years ago, the world Health Organization (WHO) asked Nutriset to design and produce zinc tablets for various studies. These tablets had to be very quickly dispersible, hide the taste of zinc and…. be cheap. Nutriset with their partner Rodael, designed the product that was chosen by WHO, and developed a very specific technology which is now being patented. WHO is encouraging the use of zinc to combat diarrhoeal illnesses. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation support projects aiming at improving global human health. They funded some of the zinc and micronutrient research work and are now financing the Scaling Up Zinc Project.

Nutriset works with world renowned and very specialized consultants in nutrition, polymers and biochemistry. Since the very beginning, Nutriset has been involved in the local production of some of its products, hence technology transfers. Ethics, product quality and reactivity to emergencies are the guideline and main concern. Their products are made available to NGOs and UN agencies.

Beatrice Simkins, International Communication and Development Expert of Nutriset, took necessary measures to see how the production could run at a large scale in Bangladesh. All the partners in this project, including Nutriset, preferred to eventually transfer the technology to a Bangladeshi laboratory for future production of zinc tablet. As a result of it, the entire process for producing the premix and the tablets was transferred to the ACME Laboratories Limited. In June 2006, a delegation arrived in Dhaka to begin the pilot production and check the quality of zinc dispersible tablet. After the quality assurance was complete, the tablets went through an accelerated stability test for three to four months and finally the product was ready for nationwide scale up under the brand name of Baby Zinc. Baby Zinc tablets were launched on November 23, 2006. The quality assurance activities will continue through to 2008.

For more information visit Nutriset’s homepage or mail at nutriset@nutriset.fr.