Sirio Pharma (City of Industry, CA) is entering the soft chews space with a range of development options for brand owners looking to capitalize on this increasingly popular nutritional format. 

Soft chews bring a variety of formulation-specific benefits. For starters, soft chews’ confectionary-style makeup allows them to carry up to four times more active mass than most other oral formats. As a result, soft chews can offer substantially reduced unit burden—the number of pieces a consumer must take daily to achieve an efficacious dose. Among other advantages, this can bolster adherence in long-term categories, such as bone health, joint support and cardiovascular health.

Soft chews’ macronutrient deliverability is owed to a base of polyols, fibers, hydrocolloids and lipid carriers. In addition to providing both structure and stability, lipid carriers, combined with emulsifiers and surfactants, create a self-emulsifying system (SES) when exposed to gastric fluids. This improves solubilization and facilitates uptake across intestinal membranes. Soft chews also are an ideal platform for multifunctional formulations. Their larger mass and compositional flexibility allow for co-delivery across several categories, including macronutrients, minerals, botanicals, vitamins and specialty bioactives.

In addition, soft chews are highly conducive to multi-layered flavor masking and texturing. Their lipids and fibers provide a buffering effect against bitter or metallic notes, while controlled release of sweeteners and flavor oils creates a smoother sensory profile compared to single-phase carriers. This enables successful and pleasurable delivery of historically challenging actives like iron, zinc, certain amino acids and botanical extracts.

But perhaps most importantly for sustained commercial success, soft chews are seen as thoroughly satisfying to consume. Their viscoelastic texture, combined with a favorable chew-down profile with sustained flavor release, mimics indulgent confectionery items rather than conventional supplement or nutraceutical products.

Sirio Pharma’s foray into the soft chews space was significantly influenced by nutrition sector veteran Mark Dewis, who joined the company earlier this year as general manager, Sirio Americas Business Unit.

“In addition to gaining impressive inroads with consumers due to their satisfying taste and mouthfeel, soft chews offer exceptional versatility and robustness concerning the types and amounts of active ingredients they can deliver,” said Dewis. “Combined with their relative ease in manufacturing, these attributes make soft chews an ideal addition to our wide array of product formats. We’re excited to bring our decades of development expertise to this rapidly emerging segment.”

For more information, visit www.siriopharma.com/en/.