Pharmaceutical industry trade shows

Oh, you re just a distributor. If I had a nickel for every time I heard that when a prospective customer approached our booth at a trade show, let us just say I wouldn t have to be working. Many assume that the role of distributor can be relegated to that of middleman, reseller, or intermediary one who lacks the expertise of those who actually manufacture products— Oh So you just buy products and resell them to someone else. These gross oversimplifications do little to explain the scale, complexity, and critical role that a distributor plays in the movement of goods and services from manufacturer to end user (the supply chain), particularly in the pharmaceutical industry. 

In the food industry, these natural products have now been classified under a new class of food called nutraceuticals or functional foods, because these products provide a health benefit beyond basic nutrition 22, 23). According to Wilkinson 24), most of the nutraceuticals used in the food industry are plant derived. Further, Addae-Mensah (25), showed that the world trade in medicinal plants accounts for about 30% of the total dmg market and was estimated excluding plants used as raw material sources for the essential oils required to manufacture cosmetics, food additives and other non-medicinal purposes. The increased recogiution of the value of natural products in the pharmaceutical, neutraceutical, cosmetic and other industries have created a huge demand for raw natural products. By taking Rooibos tea as an example from South Africa, Wilson 26) in detail describes the demand for Rooibos from different countries. However, for many natural products estimation of the actual demand is very difficult and the data sparse given the diversity of natural products used across industries and production variation within and across countries and the lack of... 

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