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Vitamin company spreads wings

Blackmores chief executive Christine Holgate is in Jakarta today to launch the company’s expansion into the Indonesian market.

The Sydney-based vitamin and supplements company has been operating in China, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand for some years but has held back from the Indonesian market as it searched for the right partner.

It has now partnered in a joint venture with Indonesia’s Kalbe Farma, one of the largest health care companies in South East Asia.

“We will be launching with eight products and have 25 products by the end of the year,” Ms Holgate said yesterday.

“It is quite a complex registration process in Indonesia compared with Australia. But we are used to the different Asian markets where it can take six months to a year to get registered.”

She said Blackmores had chosen to partner with Kalbe as it was a major supplier of the nutritional supplements market in Indonesia.

“It’s a market worth around $2 billion in Indonesia and it’s growing really fast,” she said.

“The country has one of the fastest growing middle classes in the world and it’s predicted to be the third biggest economy in the world by 2030,” she said.

She said Indonesians were increasingly interested in more Western versions of natural health products. She said Kalbe had a strong “common shared sense of purpose” with Blackmores including having an institute to train people in natural health care products.

She said Blackmores would be able to leverage Kalbe’s training processes and its strong representation in shopping centres throughout Indonesia where it has health centres giving advice on natural health products.

Ms Holgate has been in Indonesia for the past week at the Australian-Indonesian dialogue which is aimed at boosting trade between Australia and Indonesia. Federal Trade Minister Steve Ciobo has been negotiating a free trade agreement with Indonesia, reviving a process which stalled in 2013.

Ms Holgate said only 2 per cent of Australia’s trade was done with Indonesia and added there were business opportunities in areas such as health, education and financial services. She said Australian companies needed to negotiate partnerships with Indonesian companies to expand into the market.

Blackmores’ business in Indonesia was “not going to be a huge overnight.”“But you need to plant seeds to grow trees and this is an important next step in our history of growing in Asia.”