Ingredient shortages are reshaping supplement product development: how can brands adapt?

Ingredient availability, rising costs and supply chain uncertainty are reshaping supplement product development. For brands launching or scaling nutrition products, building flexible formulations has become essential.

We’re all familiar with the headlines: whey protein prices reaching record highs, continued pressure on cocoa powder prices, branded creatine becoming increasingly difficult to source. Ingredients that once felt like a staple within a formulation now come with a level of uncertainty. 

When your products rely on those ingredients, though, the headlines are only part of the story. The bigger challenge is understanding how changing market conditions affect product development, margins and long-term growth, and how to respond.

While product development has historically been driven by consumer trends, brands are increasingly having to navigate economic and supply chain pressures that sit outside of their control, while still building products that are commercially viable, scalable and capable of long-term growth. 

That can mean asking some difficult questions. What happens if the cost of a key ingredient increases significantly? If demand suddenly increases, can you scale production without compromising margins or availability? How exposed is the product to supply issues? 

They're not always the most exciting questions to ask, but they're often the ones that determine how successful a product will be in the long term.

When market conditions change, brands have a few choices: pass increased costs onto customers and risk losing competitiveness; absorb increased costs and compromise on margins; continue with the original formulation and accept that your product might go out of stock. There’s no silver bullet. 

But more recently, we’re seeing brands take a fourth option: rethinking products to create something that’s more resilient, more flexible and better prepared for change. 

Don't become overly reliant on a single ingredient

For years, whey was the obvious choice for protein products, cocoa was the go-to flavour for indulgent formats, creatine was primarily associated with sports nutrition. It’s a level of dependence that works when supply is stable and pricing is predictable but when it isn’t, the limitations of relying too heavily on one ingredient quickly become clear. 

It’s not just that ingredients become more expensive. These issues can fundamentally change a product’s identity, formulation or even how it can be described. 

Take Nestlé and McVitie’s, for example, which last year reduced the cocoa content in some of their products in response to rising ingredient costs. However, UK law dictates that in order to be called “chocolate”, a product must contain at least 20% cocoa solids and 20% milk solids. The result was that a number of their products are now “chocolate flavoured” rather than chocolate. 

The relevance to the world of supplements is direct. 

Sports nutrition and wellness products are often built around a single hero ingredient in exactly the same way, with whey, creatine, collagen and plant proteins becoming so central to formulation they effectively define the product. 

In the same way chocolate manufacturers have been reformulating around cocoa constraints, supplement brands may find themselves needing to rethink formulations entirely: blending multiple protein sources, incorporating complementary ingredients or exploring new ways to deliver the same consumer benefit.

The key here is in how product development is approached. Instead of asking “how do we launch a creatine product for women?”, the more useful question becomes: “how do we deliver the same consumer outcome if this ingredient becomes more expensive, restricted, or unpredictable?”. 

Consumers buy outcomes, not ingredients

Consumers rarely buy a product because they're loyal to a particular ingredient. 

Instead, they buy products because they want what is being offered: whether that’s to feel stronger, recover better, improve overall wellbeing or any of the myriad other benefits available. 

It does, of course, make perfect sense but it’s a perspective that offers brands an opportunity when it comes to creating more resilient products. If your product is built around a benefit rather than a single ingredient, you have much more flexibility to adapt to market pressures. 

For decades, whey dominated because muscle growth and sports performance were the primary focus of protein products but as protein has become relevant across healthy ageing, satiety, beauty and everyday wellness, the category has become far more diverse. Although whey remains the go-to ingredient for many products, brands can explore alternative protein sources and blends that better suit their formulation, commercial and positioning needs.

A product for healthy ageing could combine whey with milk proteins to support muscle maintenance while optimising cost and taste. A beauty-from-within formulation might lean on collagen as the primary protein source, while products focused on satiety or general wellness can use blends of milk and plant proteins depending on the nutritional profile, functionality and commercial requirements.

This shift in consumer need is giving brands much more freedom in how they formulate products. Rather than relying on a single protein source, they can choose ingredients based on a combination of efficacy, taste, cost, availability and positioning, while still delivering the outcome consumers are looking for.

Develop supplement products that can evolve

When we're working with brands, we always encourage them to think beyond launch.

Creatine is a good example of why. A few years ago, creatine was largely confined to sports nutrition but today, thanks to a growing body of research into its wide-ranging potential, it's appearing in products for cognition, healthy ageing, women's health and everyday wellness, in addition to its core consumer base.

While this is creating enormous opportunities, it's also creating enormous demand and we've seen supply pressures emerge as a result.

When we talk about thinking beyond launch, this is exactly what we mean. It's not just about creating a great formulation for today's market, it's about understanding whether that product can continue to grow if ingredient costs change, supply tightens or demand exceeds expectations.

That means thinking carefully about formulation from the outset, as well as the implications it may have on future growth plans. It might mean moving away from a branded version, exploring alternative supply routes or designing formulations that deliver effective doses without becoming overly reliant on a single ingredient.

Alternatively, it could mean combining creatine with complementary ingredients that help achieve the desired outcome, creating products that are more flexible as markets evolve.

The point isn't to compromise efficacy, it's to build products that can adapt and scale without losing the benefit consumers are looking for. 

It's also why forecasting has become such an important part of product strategy. Brands that are able to plan further ahead can often secure annual volumes, negotiate more favourable pricing and help mitigate the impact of future increases when availability is at risk. 

Coming back to last year’s cocoa crisis as an example: as prices rose and availability tightened, many brands struggled to secure supply and products ended up going out of stock. Those with stronger forecasting and supply planning were in a much better position to navigate the disruption.

Ingredient shortages aren't just a short-term challenge to navigate, they're exposing a much bigger truth about product development: the brands that scale most successfully are often the ones that have built flexibility into their products from the beginning, balancing innovation with commercial realities and planning for change from day one. 

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