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The truth about Russian sports nutrition: raw materials, cost, tricks
Author: Timko Ilya - master of the whole project and fitness trainer. All articles by the author ➤
Hello everyone. We are now seriously considering the production of our own sports nutrition brand "Your Coach". As I ventured into this direction, I was able to get a glimpse behind the scenes of our domestic sports nutrition industry. What I saw there somewhat disappointed me. Let me clarify that in this article, I will not mention any specific brands or products to avoid legal issues. I will simply express my opinion and share the information I know, and you can draw your own conclusions. I will touch on topics such as raw materials for Russian sports nutrition, costs, quality, and so on. I learned all of this because I’ve recently been in contact with directors of domestic brands, visited production facilities, tried raw materials, seen formulations, and even created some myself. So, let's get started. Raw Materials1. Almost all the raw materials for Russian sports nutrition are imported. We do not have local factories that produce protein concentrates, individual amino acids, BCAAs, or carnitine. Everything is imported from abroad. Proteins usually come from Europe and Argentina. The rest mainly comes from China and Indonesia. 2. Practically all these raw materials are of quite good quality and have the necessary certifications. I have personally tried a lot of raw materials and have no complaints about the quality. 3. All brands of Russian sports nutrition produce their products from the same raw materials. The fact is that there aren’t many factories in the world that manufacture raw materials for sports nutrition. Moreover, the ones suitable for the Russian market in terms of geography and cost are even fewer. As a result, all brands buy raw materials from the same suppliers. CostAfter studying the cost of raw materials and developing several formulations, I came to my own understanding of the prices for Russian sports nutrition. Here’s what I realized: many Russian brands sell their products (especially protein) at prices that, if done honestly, are unrealistically low. Here is how much, in my opinion, proteins could cost if they are not diluted with anything and made honestly. These figures are based on the costs of raw materials, labor, production, packaging, and markup:
These are the current figures considering the average markup on Russian sports nutrition of 70% - 80%. Yes, yes. This is roughly the markup from the cost price to the retail price. And some manufacturers make it as cheaply as possible to apply a 100% markup! What does this mean? It means that if you purchase a domestic product and its price falls roughly within these ranges (or a little lower), you can expect decent quality. However, if the price is significantly lower, you can confidently say that the product is diluted. How it's diluted, I will discuss below. For instance, there are domestic producers who sell casein for about 1100 – 1200 rubles per 1 kg. Knowing the prices of raw materials, I can say that it is practically impossible to produce honest casein and sell it for that price. QualityIn the last 5 years, many domestic brands have appeared in our country. Now there are already dozens of them, both regional and nationwide. Quite a few of the new brands that I have tried did not impress me. This made me think: what is the reason for the poor quality? After all, making proteins, for example, is not that difficult if you have ready-made raw materials. The reason is quite simple: it lies in the race to cheapen the product at any cost. Now, I want to tell you how some manufacturers cheapen their products. 1. They dilute protein with taurine. Taurine is a cheap amino acid. If you take such diluted protein for testing, the lab will count taurine as part of the protein. In fact, there may only be 50% protein in there. So, it’s hard to find fault with it, even if you want to. 2. They add cheaper proteins to more expensive ones. For example, they might add whey protein to casein, or soy protein to whey protein. 3. They reduce the amount of protein, meaning they put less of the original raw material. For instance, they might make a protein that is only 60%. Or BCAAs, where there are only 60% BCAAs. However, in this case, they will have to indicate these figures in the composition. But not everyone reads the labels. 4. They add more sugar and fewer flavoring additives. The thing is, flavoring additives (such as banana, strawberry, etc.) are quite expensive. Sugar (for example, fructose) is cheap. To use fewer flavoring additives while still maintaining a rich flavor, a part of the flavoring additives is replaced with sugar. Therefore, what you get are overly sweet proteins and gainers. Conclusions1. The raw materials used to make Russian sports nutrition are good and on par with those of foreign brands. So, we can say that everyone has the same raw materials. 2. Most Russian brands are fixated on affordability, starting from the packaging (which is whatever) and extending to the composition. Have you ever wondered why there is not a single Russian gainer that has at least 30% protein? It's because it would then cost more. 3. Our Russian sports nutrition can be just as good in quality as imports, and at the same time, it will be 20% - 30% cheaper than imports. But that's not enough for the public. People want it to be twice as cheap! Even better – free. 4. Russian brands produce such consumer goods because people are willing to consume them. As long as it’s cheaper, they don’t care about quality. Unfortunately, the blame lies more with the consumers than the manufacturers. By the way, I do not want to say that all domestic sports nutrition is bad. There are decent brands, such as CULT and PureProtein. In summary, I have said what I wanted to. I hope that our future line of sports nutrition “Your Coach” can somehow change the sports nutrition market. Good luck! SIMILAR ARTICLES
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