IN Brief:
- I.T.S has created a health and wellness division focused on sports nutrition, functional foods, and wellness applications.
- The division adds senior leadership as the company expands its capability in nutrition-led flavour development.
- The launch reflects growing pressure to solve taste, texture, stability, and processing challenges in functional products.
I.T.S has launched a dedicated health and wellness division, strengthening its flavour development work in sports nutrition, functional foods, supplements, and wellness-focused products.
The Newbury-based flavour house has appointed Mark Nicholson and Paschalina Papadogkona to senior roles within the division. The business is expanding its activity in nutrition-led applications where functional ingredients have to be balanced with taste, texture, stability, and production performance.
I.T.S already works across flavour applications including dairy, bakery, beverages, savoury products, and nutrition. Its health and wellness activity focuses on flavour systems for supplements, protein shakes, functional beverages, and wellness products where active ingredients often create bitterness, astringency, off-notes, chalkiness, or texture challenges.
The division follows wider investment by I.T.S in expanded flavour capacity, including a second site and additional laboratory capability. That capacity is important because health and wellness products often require more application work than conventional flavour matching. Proteins, fibres, vitamins, minerals, botanicals, caffeine, amino acids, probiotics, sweeteners, and functional extracts can all affect flavour release, mouthfeel, stability, and processing behaviour.
Sports nutrition and wellness have moved beyond specialist channels into mainstream food and drink. Protein-enriched snacks, ready-to-drink shakes, functional waters, gut-health products, fortified bakery, and mood or energy-positioned formats are increasingly visible across retail and foodservice. The manufacturing challenge is to deliver those benefits in products that still taste familiar and remain stable through shelf life.
Flavour is central because many active ingredients are difficult to mask. High-protein formulations can bring dairy, cereal, pea, soy, or collagen-like notes. Botanicals can create bitterness or medicinal profiles. Minerals can add metallic notes. High-intensity sweeteners may leave lingering sweetness or aftertaste. Acid systems in functional drinks can interact with flavours and colours, while heat treatment can change flavour balance during processing.
Ingredient suppliers are increasingly developing multifunctional systems that remove or replace scrutinised additives while preserving process performance, as shown by natural reformulation platforms aimed at cleaner ingredient declarations. I.T.S’s health and wellness division sits in the same technical space. The work is not only to add flavour, but to make a functional formulation acceptable, manufacturable, and commercially repeatable.
That distinction is becoming sharper as wellness claims crowd the market. Product developers need to manage taste, texture, nutrition, ingredient declarations, regulatory boundaries, and cost. A functional product that performs nutritionally but fails on sensory quality will struggle to build repeat purchase. Conversely, a product that tastes good but cannot maintain active stability, label compliance, or process consistency creates technical and commercial risk.
Development timelines are also becoming tighter. Retailers and brands want rapid innovation in protein, energy, gut health, hydration, women’s health, cognitive support, and healthy ageing. Each category carries different flavour and processing demands. A flavour supplier with specialist health and wellness capability can reduce development friction by understanding both the ingredient system and the end-product format.
The division may also help I.T.S compete as large global flavour and ingredient groups build broader wellness platforms. The market is becoming more technically demanding, but it still rewards speed, application support, and close customer work. Independent suppliers can have an advantage where manufacturers need flexible development support rather than standard catalogue systems.
Wellness positioning is no longer just a marketing layer added to conventional products. It requires formulation systems that can carry functional ingredients, support claims, survive processing, and deliver a sensory experience consumers will accept. Flavour houses are moving closer to product engineering because taste is often the point at which functional ambition either succeeds or fails.
