Freshness down to a system

Among these is an herb-based antioxidant sprayed onto the herbs before manufacturing. The others are three packaging components carefully selected to keep oxygen from the products. The FreshCare system revolves around the Ageless® oxygen absorber from Mitsubishi Gas Chemical America (New York NY) distributed through Cryovac (Duncan SC). "We wanted to remove all oxygen from the bottle" says Grace Lynn Rich marketing director for Nature's Herbs. "Ageless was a major step for us. We built the FreshCare system around it." The firm also uses a glass bottle from Silver Spur (Ontario CA) to assure no oxygen permeation. The amber bottle was custom-designed by Nature's Herbs. Finally a Safe-Gard(TM) brand104-A aluminum foil inner-seal from 3M (St. Paul MN) flexo-printed with the FreshCare name fits inside a polypropylene cap from Top-Seal (Phoenix AZ) and is induction-sealed to the bottle. The three-part package is so effective the firm uses no expiration dates. "Our products are as fresh when you open them as they are the day they were manufactured" says Rich. Nature's Herbs has over 300 products in its line with prices ranging from $7 to $30. The products can be found in health food stores nationally.