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The company that brought you diet pasta now makes obesity bread
Food & Agriculture
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From the company that brought you halal-certified sheep collagen, bald eagle algae, diet noodles and low-sugar sugar, comes certified low-GI tortillas.
Holista CollTech (ASX:HCT), which will be more familiar to recent investors as a COVID-19 hand sanitiser play, has returned to its usual stomping ground of health foods.
It says the Sydney University has given its tortillas a Low Glycemic Index reading of 54, a figure it says is 30 per cent lower than regular flatbreads. GI measures a food’s impact on blood sugar: higher GI foods raise blood sugar levels.
Holista CollTech CEO Dr Rajen Manicka says the global flatbread market is growing fast, so the company wants to capitalise on that trend while also offering foods that help with rising obesity and incidence of diabetes.
Holista CollTech has a partnership with Bursa Malaysia-listed Kawan Food Berhad to sell low-GI flatbreads as roti canai. To date it’s sold $344,000 worth of diet tortillas to the Malaysian company.
It expects another $285,000 order before the end of June, and the company needs to place another $371,000 worth of orders by September to satisfy a $1m first year sales commitment.
Diet flatbreads are actually a reasonably large market, according to Holista CollTech.
“The worldwide tortilla market is projected to grow at a compounded annual rate of 4.9 per cent to $US14.5bn ($20.8bn) by 2025, propelled largely by a 7.8 per cent annual growth rate for flatbread wraps in China,” the company said.
“The report estimates the US market for tortillas to maintain its growth at 3.8 per cent per year due to the rising popularity of Mexican cuisine.”
Holista CollTech plans to now sell the tortillas in China and the US by the end of the year.
The company rose to prominence this year when it said in January that hand sanitiser sales were spiking in Malaysia.
However, March quarter sales receipts touched $1.9m, down 20 per cent on the December quarter and average for the last six quarters.
Holista CollTech’s other recent projects include a $1m retrofitted factory in Western Australia to make halal-certified collagen from “disease-free Australian sheep”, low carb instant noodles to fight obesity.
