The dietary supplement industry has spent much of the past 25 years attracting buyers from outside the traditional natural-products business. Large food companies, consumer packaged goods companies and pharmaceutical groups have repeatedly looked at supplements and seen an appealing combination of higher growth, attractive margins, recurring consumption and increasing consumer interest in preventive health.

The results, however, have been decidedly mixed.

Some large corporations have successfully built substantial nutrition and wellness businesses. Others have paid premium prices for supplement companies, struggled to maintain their growth, written down hundreds of millions of dollars in goodwill and eventually sold the businesses.

Two transactions announced only weeks apart in 2026 illustrate just how dramatically the strategy continues to evolve.

On August 4, Procter & Gamble announced an agreement to acquire premium supplement company Thorne for $3.8 billion. Thorne is expected to generate approximately $650 million in sales in 2026, meaning P&G is paying close to six times expected annual revenue for a company built around science, premium positioning and strong relationships with healthcare practitioners. P&G described Thorne’s scientific rigor, product quality and practitioner credibility as central reasons for the acquisition.

Less than one month later, on September 1, Nestlé announced that it would sell much of its mainstream vitamins, minerals and supplements business to private equity firm Yellow Wood Partners for $1 billion. The portfolio being sold—including Nature’s Bounty, Osteo Bi-Flex, Ester-C, Puritan’s Pride, Nuun and other brands—generated approximately $1.2 billion in sales in 2025.

The contrast is striking: one of the world’s largest consumer products companies is paying billions to move deeper into premium supplements at almost the same time one of the world’s largest food companies is reducing its exposure to mainstream supplements.

The First Wave: Big Food Discovers Wellness

One of the early examples was Unilever’s acquisition of SlimFast in 2000 for approximately $2.3 billion. Initially, the purchase looked promising. Unilever reported strong early growth and expanded SlimFast internationally. But consumer preferences in weight management changed rapidly.

By 2004 and 2005, Unilever recorded impairment charges of €791 million and €363 million, respectively, related to SlimFast. The company later sold the business in 2014 and recorded another €305 million impairment associated with the disposal.

The SlimFast experience demonstrated an issue that would reappear repeatedly: a large company can purchase a successful health brand based on historical growth only to discover that supplement and wellness categories can change considerably faster than conventional packaged-food categories.

Another example came from Campbell Soup. In 2012, Campbell paid $1.55 billion for Bolthouse Farms, primarily to establish a larger position in healthy beverages and fresh foods. Bolthouse was not primarily a dietary supplement company, but the acquisition reflected the same corporate movement toward health and wellness. Seven years later, Campbell sold Bolthouse for $510 million as it dismantled its Campbell Fresh division.

Clorox Provides One of the Clearest Supplement Examples

Clorox’s experience may be even more relevant to the dietary supplement industry.

In 2018, Clorox paid $700 million for Nutranext, adding dietary supplement businesses to a portfolio that already included RenewLife. Its supplement holdings eventually included Natural Vitality, NeoCell, Rainbow Light and RenewLife.

The results did not meet the company’s original expectations.

In fiscal 2021, Clorox recorded a $329 million impairment against its vitamins, minerals and supplements business. Importantly, Clorox itself identified some of the reasons: greater competitive activity than expected, declining channels in which the business was overdeveloped and higher investment requirements necessary to generate growth.

Two years later, Clorox recorded another $433 million in impairments specifically related to the VMS business. In September 2024, it sold the entire Better Health VMS portfolio to an affiliate of Piping Rock Health Products. Clorox subsequently reported an after-tax loss of $118 million on the divestiture.

This case is particularly instructive because Clorox is an experienced and highly successful consumer-products company. The problem was not an inability to understand retail or consumer marketing. Rather, the economics, competitive intensity, channels and investment requirements of supplements proved different from what had originally been assumed.

Muscle Milk: Not a Financial Disaster, but a Lesson in Specialization

Hormel Foods acquired CytoSport, maker of Muscle Milk, in 2014 for approximately $450 million. At the time, CytoSport was expected to generate approximately $370 million in annual sales and gave Hormel an immediate position in the rapidly expanding sports-nutrition category.

Hormel sold CytoSport to PepsiCo five years later for $465 million. Unlike several other examples, Hormel did not suffer a large nominal loss on the purchase and sale.

What is notable is Hormel’s explanation.

Hormel Chairman and CEO Jim Snee said the company had concluded that PepsiCo was the appropriate long-term owner because PepsiCo possessed “deep expertise” in sports nutrition and had already been a distribution partner for Muscle Milk.

That is an important distinction. Sometimes the issue is not that the acquired brand has failed. Instead, management concludes that another company possesses channels, capabilities or category expertise better suited to maximizing its potential.

Nestlé: A Tale of Two Supplement Strategies

Nestlé provides perhaps the most interesting modern example because some of its supplement acquisitions appear to have worked considerably better than others.

In 2017, Nestlé agreed to acquire Atrium Innovations for $2.3 billion. Atrium included Garden of Life, Pure Encapsulations, Douglas Laboratories, Genestra and several other specialty nutrition brands.

One detail of that transaction is particularly noteworthy: Nestlé announced that Atrium’s existing management team would continue operating the business after the acquisition.

Four years later, Nestlé made a much larger move into mainstream supplements.

In 2021, Nestlé paid $5.75 billion for core brands of The Bountiful Company, including Nature’s Bounty, Solgar, Osteo Bi-Flex and Puritan’s Pride, along with the U.S. private-label business.

The valuation was substantial. Nestlé disclosed that the price represented approximately 3.1 times sales and 16.8 times EBITDA based on the acquired brands’ previous 12 months of performance.

Five years later, Nestlé is selling much of the mainstream portion of that business for $1 billion.

It would be incorrect simply to say Nestlé bought the same assets for $5.75 billion and sold them for $1 billion. It did not. Nestlé is retaining assets including Solgar, and the original Bountiful transaction included businesses that are not identical to the portfolio now being divested.

Nevertheless, the strategic reversal is significant.

Nestlé CEO Philipp Navratil said the company is concentrating resources where it has its strongest competitive advantage and specifically identified premium, science-led VMS as an area where it sees future growth. Nestlé said Solgar and Pure Encapsulations continue to perform strongly, while the mainstream VMS business requires “a different approach under dedicated ownership.”

That statement may capture one of the most important lessons from 25 years of supplement acquisitions.

The problem may not be supplements themselves.

The problem may be trying to manage every supplement business in the same way.

Unilever’s Second Attempt Looks Very Different

Unilever’s history also supports that conclusion.

The company that struggled badly with SlimFast later returned to health and wellness through acquisitions including OLLY, Liquid I.V. and Nutrafol.

This time the strategy has produced much better results.

Rather than treating the companies primarily as extensions of a conventional food portfolio, Unilever built a dedicated Wellbeing business emphasizing premium products, digital engagement, innovation and science-led consumer positioning.

In 2024, Unilever reported double-digit growth from its Wellbeing business, led by Liquid I.V., Nutrafol and OLLY. Growth remained double digit in 2025, with Nutrafol and Liquid I.V. leading performance and OLLY delivering high-single-digit growth.

The same corporation that suffered one of the industry’s most visible health-and-wellness acquisition disappointments appears to have learned how to approach the category differently.

Big Pharma Has Followed a Different Evolution

Pharmaceutical companies have also spent decades participating in vitamins, supplements and consumer health, but their evolution has taken a somewhat different path.

Rather than demonstrating that pharmaceutical companies cannot operate supplement businesses, recent history suggests that many have concluded prescription pharmaceuticals and consumer healthcare increasingly require different organizational structures.

GSK combined its consumer-health operations with assets from Novartis and later Pfizer. In 2022, that business was separated from GSK and became Haleon, an independent consumer-health company whose brands include Centrum, Caltrate and Emergen-C.

Today, Haleon identifies itself as the world’s largest VMS company. It generated approximately £1.69 billion in VMS revenue in 2025, with brands such as Centrum continuing to perform particularly well in markets including Asia-Pacific.

Merck KGaA followed a similar logic when it sold its Consumer Health business to P&G for €3.4 billion in 2018, saying the transaction allowed Merck to focus more heavily on innovation-driven healthcare, life-science and performance-material businesses.

Sanofi went further in 2025, selling a 50% controlling stake in its Opella consumer-health business to CD&R while retaining a large minority ownership position. Sanofi received approximately €10 billion in net proceeds and described the transaction as part of its transformation into a more focused biopharmaceutical company. Opella itself remains a major global OTC and VMS business.

These divestitures should not automatically be interpreted as failures. In many cases the consumer businesses were healthy. Instead, they illustrate recognition that pharmaceuticals and consumer wellness operate according to different economics, innovation cycles, marketing models and organizational requirements.

Why Do Some Acquisitions Go Wrong?

Looking across the history, several recurring issues emerge.

First is valuation. High-growth supplement brands frequently attract buyers only after several years of exceptional performance. The acquisition price therefore incorporates expectations that rapid growth will continue. If growth merely normalizes rather than collapses, the valuation can still become difficult to justify.

Second is speed. Supplement markets can change remarkably quickly. Consumer interest can shift between probiotics, collagen, adaptogens, sports nutrition, healthy aging, women’s health, metabolic health, creatine, personalized nutrition and other categories over relatively short periods. Large multinational organizations frequently have longer innovation and approval cycles.

Third is channel complexity. Amazon, direct-to-consumer sales, healthcare practitioners, specialty natural retailers, club stores, pharmacies, mass retail, social commerce and international cross-border e-commerce can all play different roles in supplements. Expertise in grocery distribution does not automatically translate into expertise across those channels.

Fourth is science and credibility. Many premium supplement companies derive part of their value from practitioner relationships, specialized formulations, ingredient sourcing, clinical research and highly knowledgeable consumers. Those characteristics can be weakened if the acquired company is treated simply as another conventional consumer brand.

Finally, there is corporate integration. Acquirers naturally look for efficiencies in procurement, manufacturing, finance, marketing and management. But excessive integration can remove some of the entrepreneurial speed and specialized knowledge that made the company valuable in the first place.

The Next Test: P&G and Thorne

That brings the industry back to P&G’s proposed $3.8 billion acquisition of Thorne.

P&G is not new to supplements. It acquired New Chapter in 2012, and New Chapter remains part of P&G’s current healthcare portfolio. P&G also acquired Merck KGaA’s Consumer Health business in 2018.

What makes Thorne particularly interesting is the valuation and positioning.

Thorne is not being purchased as another mainstream multivitamin. P&G specifically emphasizes its scientific reputation, personalized-health capabilities, high-quality manufacturing and relationships with healthcare practitioners.

In many respects, that mirrors the direction Nestlé says it now prefers: premium, differentiated and science-led supplements rather than competing primarily for scale in mainstream VMS.

The next several years will show whether P&G can preserve the characteristics that made Thorne valuable while applying the enormous retail, marketing, international and supply-chain capabilities of a company its size.

If it succeeds, Thorne could become an important example of how large corporations can successfully acquire supplement businesses.

If it does not, the industry’s long history already provides plenty of cautionary precedents.

What this means for the dietary supplement industry

The historical record does not support the simple conclusion that “Big Food” or “Big Pharma” inevitably mismanages dietary supplement companies.

It does, however, suggest that large corporations have repeatedly underestimated how different the supplement industry is from conventional food, household products and prescription pharmaceuticals.

Successful acquisitions appear more likely when the buyer preserves specialized management, recognizes the importance of scientific credibility and practitioner relationships, maintains the speed necessary to respond to rapidly changing consumer trends and gives the supplement business sufficient independence to operate according to the economics of its own category.

The evolution is also changing what large companies are willing to pay for.

Twenty years ago, many acquisitions were built around mass-market weight management or the idea of simply entering “health and wellness.” Today’s most desirable assets increasingly revolve around premium positioning, clinical evidence, personalized health, practitioner trust, specialized ingredients and direct relationships with consumers.

Nestlé’s decision to sell mainstream supplement brands while retaining premium science-oriented businesses, combined with P&G’s $3.8 billion bet on Thorne, may therefore represent the beginning of another phase in the industry’s consolidation.

Large food, pharmaceutical and consumer-product companies have not lost interest in dietary supplements.

They may simply be getting much more selective about which supplement companies they want to own—and learning that acquiring a successful supplement brand and successfully managing one are two very different things.

Sources: Nestlé corporate announcements and financial disclosures; Procter & Gamble corporate announcements and SEC filings; Unilever annual reports and SEC filings; Clorox SEC filings; Hormel Foods corporate announcements; GSK and Haleon corporate reports; Merck KGaA corporate announcements; Sanofi corporate announcements; Reuters; HPA-Global.

If your company is active in the dietary supplement, functional food, ingredient, or health products industry and is not yet a member of HPA-Global, we invite you to consider joining the association. HPA-Global supports members with China and global market intelligence, marketing visibility, industry connections, and access to regulatory support for supplements, ingredients, and related health products in China, the EU, Japan, South Korea, and the U.S. For companies looking to expand internationally and stay ahead of market and regulatory changes, HPA-Global offers one of the best values in the industry. www.hpaglobal.org.