I dont know anyone with just even a little bit of smarts who gets their protein powders from China. Besides the melamine scare, protien is extremely heavy.....there isnt a shortage of cows/dairy processing etc here in the states and it would be akin to "ordering concrete and having it shipped to here in the USA paying huge shipping costs versus buying concrete thats allready here in the USA".......Does anyone buy milk and ship it over from China? Same thing. Wouldnt make sense
Our protien powders (microfil, coldfil, ultra, concentrate, crossflow etc) come from here in the USA thru either the Dairy itself (usually all located in the upper northern section of the USA) or its co-company associate in packaging/processing (with whey being the byproduct of milk production).
The Ion Exchange is pretty much made by 2-3 companies alone in the entire world. The one in the USA struck a deal with Starbucks a couple years ago and shut us (and everyone else off) and signed an agreement to only deal with them....sent a letter to everyone else that they are being excluded due to this Exclusive Starbucks agreement. That protein cappacino didnt work out and that company had to come back to us and ask us to buy again (must of been kind of embarrasing)...so we buy Ion from both the USA company and that New Zealand company we used when the Ion was limited.
Protein is a power in numbers game. You have to buy huge amounts to get the prices you need to have. We send 6 to 7 figure checks out every month to certain dairies/whey processors to get the price point.....and thats for single proteins.......and thats buying pallets upon pallets upon pallets upon pallets.
$5,000 dollars gets you a price per pound that is sometimes higher than what Optimum nutrition sells for per pound on the shelf in RETAIL FORM! (jug/label/cap/heat seal/pre-labor/pre-profit) while 500 thousand dollars per order gets you a price per pound that destroys that 5000 dollar order price.
Sadly I cannot wait for GMP to fully take effect. I am allready seeing it and Doug (my business partner and I) are extremely happy with whats taking place. We have been inundated lately with company's wanting us to make products lately because the company's they did have making their products were "using concentrates instead of Isolates", doing it in the back of their Uncle Eddies garage, and buying just crap material. There is an outfit out my way within 500 miles of me that alot of you guys probably use their protein because it tastes good and its really cheap. And his protein changes every single month....LOL....he buys whatever is offspec and is available on the cheap every month, no matter how that protein is manufactured, markets it as a whey blend and then flat out scams everyone with an offspec (doesnt meet manufacturing standards) concentrate. People love it though and buy it in droves because his flavoring system is so good, some months you get severe digestion problems, some months you dont, it depends on what offspec protein he got a deal on...LOL
There is another large company on the East Coast whose destroying themselves....all of their customers are coming to us saying the same thing "they are scamming to stay afloat and use shoddy materials to make retail products, stomach problems etc"......listen there really isnt a million dairies and protein processing plants in the USA, we have virtually everyone who is out there available to us. When a company can make a finished isolate (jug, label, cap, heat seal, labor, ingredients, flavor) for someone else that is lower in price than just the raw material that doug and I can acquire for a 6-7 figure check....LOL.....you kind of figure out who is "straight out scamming" to stay alive in the recession with a offspec protein concentrate instead of the 93% crossflow isolate they were promised.
One of the worst decisions I ever made was getting into the protein business...but I am in it now and stuck. One of the best decisions I ever made was getting into the nutraceutical business/capsule business. Protein is heavy, alot of labor involved, the shipping of it to us and from us is OUTFREAKINGRAGEOUS because it is so heavy. The profit margin on protein is paltry.
Meanwhile, and you can see what and why companies become millionaires overnight. ALR Industries, Gaspari, Nutrex etc etc etc......anyone with a good capsule fat burner. I manufacture capsules for many company's. In alot of cases the raw materials for a bottle of 120 capsules costs about 1 dollar to 6 dollars (tops!!!!).....In alot (MOST) of cases the actual bottle, cap, and label costs more than the actual capsules inside.
So what you have is a capsule bottle that costs someone 3 to 8 bucks to make and they sell it for $29.95 to $69.95, it weighs a feather to ship, its small to ship and I can ship it directly to wherever they want me to.....bb.com, Europa, so they dont even have to worry about seeing it....it doesnt even go to them first, it goes directly to the distributor or supplement stores and they just continue to do the marketing.
Its pretty simple...
Sell 100,000 pounds of protein and you might of made a couple 100 thousand dollars but you subtract that profit because your shippng and labor costs are so outrageous. BUT....Sell 100,000 capsule bottles, with that outragous profit margin you just made up to about 6 million dollars. So you see how these capsule companies become millionaires overnight. Make a good capsulized product that works and gets a good groundswell of consumers who like it along with your marketing.....overnight millionaire.
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