Under-the-Radar Botanicals to Watch in 2018

With “natural” an industry imperative and “plant-based” consumers’ new rallying cry, you’d be hard-pressed to find a category more perfectly poised for growth than herbal and botanical dietary supplements. This nature-made category practically epitomizes what consumers imagine when their thoughts turn to alternative health-and-wellness paths-paths well worn by millennia-old healing traditions stretching from the Amazon to Asia.

And it’s true that herbal and botanical ingredients are the historical roots-literally and figuratively-from which today’s supplement industry springs. But what makes this an especially exciting time for the sector is the extent to which contemporary science now corroborates what traditional practitioners held to be true-and the extent to which contemporary culture seems open to exploring what the category has to offer.

Notes Shaheen Majeed, president of Sabinsa, worldwide (East Windsor, NJ), “Botanicals have a long and rich history improving human health, and consumers are aware of that. Building on that history-and reinforcing it with modern research-clearly works.”

Growth Spurt
It works, in fact, to the tune of $7.452 billion. That’s the dollar amount that US consumers spent on herbal supplements in 2016, pushing retail sales over $7 billion for the first time-7.7 percent above what they’d been the previous year, per the American Botanical Council's (ABC; Austin, TX) 2016 HerbalGram Herb Market Report.

“The botanical and herbal market continues to grow and is now stronger than ever,” declares Ramon Luna, marketing coordinator, Ecuadorian Rainforest (Belleville, NJ). MarketsandMarkets estimates demand for botanical extracts alone at nearly $4 billion in 2017, he notes, with projections for it to reach just over $6 billion by 2022. “That’s a promising outlook for botanicals and herbs in general and shows that consumers are aware of the potential of natural ingredients and may even prefer them over artificial products.”

Back to Basics
“May” is an understatement. “Many more people are going a more natural, more holistic route away from the chemical, synthetic drug therapies of the past,” says Brien Quirk, director of R&D, Draco Natural Products (San Jose, CA). That, in turn, is piquing interest in herbal and botanical remedies.

So, too, are the rising costs of staying well. As Majeed says, “Conventional healthcare is so expensive that people are looking for ways to stay healthier.” Botanicals’ perceived simplicity offers an attractive option. “Consumers are looking for natural alternatives to Western medicine, and they’re going ‘back to basics’ when it comes to health and wellness.”


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