“So our products go into someone else’s and are listed on a label and they are put up on a shelf with 600 other bottles and we hope that people see it,” Capelli said. “By bottling our own products, we can tell the world about us.”
Cyanotech takes step forward
Company to begin marketing its products
By BOBBY COMMAND
West Hawaii Today
bcommand@westhawaiitoday.com
Taking a logical step in its business evolution, a major producer of microalgae used as a nutritional supplement has taken the first steps to market its own products.
To facilitate the transition, Cyanotech’s founder, Gerald R. Cysewski, will stand down as chairman, president and chief executive officer to become chief scientific officer, focusing on developing new microalgae products.
Packaging its leading product, natural Astaxanthin under the MD Formulas label, Cyanotech has released two dietary supplement products and is set to release two more early next year.
For years, Cyanotech has successfully distributed its products worldwide to makers of nutritional, cosmetic and human and animal food makers and marketers.
“We’ve basically been a raw material supplier,” said Bob Capelli, sales and marketing vice president of the company which grows microalgae at its 90-acre Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii facility. “We would sell to a place like GNC and they would market it in their own products.”
In order to derive more value from its leading products, natural Astaxanthin and spirulina, the company has begun a search for a chief executive officer who will concentrate on the marketing aspect of the business. The board of directors has retained the executive search firm of Heidrick and Struggles to manage the search for the new CEO.
Cysewski is credited with commercializing the large-scale production of microalgae. He began investigating the process four decades ago while an assistant professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara and started small-scale operations while working with the Battelle Institute in Pasco, Wash., before founding Cyanotech at Keahole Point in 1983.
“I look forward to getting back into the lab full-time to pursue my goal of enhancing yields and discovering and commercializing new microalgae products for our portfolio that will provide important health benefits to our customers,” Cysewski said.
The two recently released vegetarian-based dietary supplement products are CardioAstin and JointAstin, both of which supply natural carotenoid antioxidants to the heart and joints. Capelli said the products have the same benefits of many drugs, but do not come with the side effects.
Bioastin, a product made from the Haematacoccus pluvialis microalgae, has been bottled since the early 1990s under the Nutrex Hawaii label. Capelli said it is the best-selling over-the-counter supplement sold at Costco in Kona.
He said its benefits derive from its superior antioxidant activity and from its ability to support and maintain natural inflammatory response, enhancing skin, muscle and joint health.
While the recently released products have gained quick followings in Hawaii, he added that it has been a struggle to get the word out about their products on the mainland. “We’ve done very well on word of mouth here, including radio shows, and people seek us out.” Capelli said sales in Honolulu skyrocketed when they got a plug on the “Perry and Price Show,” the state’s most popular morning radio show.
But on the mainland, Capelli said, about the only place the Nutrex can be found is in health food stores, or in products formulated by other nutrition retailers.
“So our products go into someone else’s and are listed on a label and they are put up on a shelf with 600 other bottles and we hope that people see it,” Capelli said. “By bottling our own products, we can tell the world about us.”