The CRI approached supplement industry veteran Sarah Kennedy, who in 2021 formed Calocurb to commercialise the product.

Kennedy’s firm pays an undisclosed licensing fee on sales in return for exclusive international rights to Amarasate. Plant and Food also got a 5% stake in Calocurb in return for further research.

Kennedy said Calocurb units sold in the US have increased six-fold in the last two years.

Manufacturing is on track to double to 15 million Calocurb capsules in the next 12 months, she said.

A standard Calocurb bottle has 90 capsules (or roughly a month’s supply, with people recommended to take one to four per day), implying some 167,000 bottles will be sold over the next year.

The privately held company doesn’t publish financials, but Kennedy says revenue doubled to more than $10m this year.

A Craigs Investment Partners promotional flyer earlier this year put Calocurb’s revenue in the year to October 2024 at just under $5m, BusinessDesk reported.

Kennedy said the business will be profitable, on an earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (ebitda) basis, by the end of its current financial year.

In July, the Government merged several CRIs – Landcare Research, AgResearch, Plant & Food Research and Scion – into the new Institute for Bioeconomy Science, which inherited Plant & Food’s 5% Calocurb stake.

The two largest Calocurb shareholders are local venture capital firms Pioneer Capital (35%) and Icehouse Ventures (34%).

Smaller shareholders include Kennedy (8%) and PR supremo Deborah Pead (1%).

A new, pill-based form of Wegovy is undergoing clinical trials, but will need US Food and Drug Administration approval before it’s commercialised.

As an all-natural supplement (beyond hops, its other ingredients are rosemary extract and canola oil), Calocurb Clinical has no regulatory hurdles to jump and no prescription is required.

But while Amarasate’s origin is in folklore – starving Scots are said to have chewed on hops to keep hunger pangs at bay during famines in the 1700s and 1900s – Kennedy says it’s backed by Plant & Research’s hard science.

The CRI tested 900 plant extracts with bitter properties before settling on Motueka hops as the active ingredient for Amarasate. Plant and Food said a clinical trial found that Amarasate could reduce short-term calorie intake in healthy, normal weight men by 18% during a 24-hour water-only fast. All up, there have been four clinical trials.

Calocurb’s website warns that side effects in the first couple of days, as your body adjusts, could include “a laxative effect”, “mild stomach irritations” and “a bit of nausea”.

But Kennedy said they are transitory and milder than the side effects associated with the injectables (Wegovy’s website says the most common side effects include nausea, diarrhoea, vomiting, constipation, fatigue, heartburn, a runny nose or sore throat and “gas”.

As the saying goes in the high-tech world, Kennedy eats her own dog food. “I’ve had a love/hate relationship with food my whole life,” she said. She takes Calocurb as a weight-gain preventative.

In the US – which accounts for nearly all of Calocurb’s sales – she also saw a market for her company’s product as a companion to Ozempic and Wegovy.

As people come off the expensive injectables (which are often not covered by Americans’ health insurance), they can use the Calocurb to prevent their weight from bouncing back.

In September, the American Chamber of Commerce in New Zealand named Calocurb Exporter of the Year to the US, Consumer Goods.

Kennedy said the GLP-1 market was worth US$54.5 billion, including the injectables, in 2024 and is forecast to grow to US$324.5b by 2035.

She saw Calocurb as having no direct competition for its patent-protected active ingredient. But for buyers not fussed about CRI backing or clinical trials, Amazon, AliExpress and Temu are awash in various pills, gummies and patches claiming GLP-1 properties.

Assuming the US expansion goes well, Kennedy will follow up with expansion into the UK, Canada and Australia.

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.