Listed health and wellness products manufacturer New Image Group has acquired the business assets of biotechnology company Somnaceutics.The assets include the patents and intellectual property connected with the natural sleep-enhancing milk product &ndash
Listed health and wellness products manufacturer New Image Group has acquired the business assets of biotechnology company Somnaceutics.
The assets include the patents and intellectual property connected with the natural sleep-enhancing milk product – Sleeptime – that was invented in New Zealand by pre-eminent scientist Professor Bob Elliott.
New Image executive chairman Graeme Clegg told the National Business Review this innovative product is “unique” and groundbreaking.
“There are a lot of products touted as helping to facilitate sleep and they are mostly herbal and just relaxing. This is a peptide, which puts babies to sleep when they are breastfed. The same peptide works on adults.”
Auckland-based Somnaceutics won the Cawthron Institute award for Innovation in Science and Technology for Sleeptime – that is sold in a sachet – at the Natural Products New Zealand Industry Awards.
Mr Clegg said only 12% of cows naturally produce milk with the sleep enhancement effect; more of those cows are being added to special dairy herds.
“We’ve got to test eight cows to find one with it.”
Earlier this year, the two companies jointly conducted a market trial with Sleeptime in Taiwan, which due to high numbers of insomniacs was the best “test bed”, Mr Clegg said.
“[Insomnia] is becoming more and more of a problem with modern lifestyle; people are having a great deal of difficulty getting the proper REM [Rapid Eye Movement] sleep, which is the relaxing, healing and rejuvenating sleep. That’s been becoming quite a major problem all around the world.”
Somnaceutics former chief executive Guy Wills, who has joined New Image as general manager, health sciences, said poor sleep affects up to 50% of people in the developed world.
Consumers are increasingly seeking natural but effective alternatives to prescription sleep medicines, said Mr Clegg.
“We’ve always known that warm milk will help you sleep. But [Sleeptime] is quite a big leap up from having a warm milk drink when you go to bed at night. This [product] utilises and activates the body’s mechanisms to give you a good sleep.”
New Image Group, which was founded in 1984, is based in New Zealand, with independent representatives in Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Africa and Taiwan.
The company also acquired a controlling stake in New Zealand natural skin care company Living Nature last month.
