Nutrition Capital Network (NCN), an organization that connects investors with high-potential growth companies, noted a 6% increase in transaction activity in the nutrition and health and wellness industry through the first six months of 2016 to 333 transactions, compared to 2015’s record pace of 627 transactions. NCN measures activity in the number of transactions tracked in its NCN Transaction Database in two categories: merger and acquisition (M&A) and investment or equity financing (not including debt or strategic partnerships) from around the world.

NCN noted a continuing surge of equity investments in food and beverage companies so far in 2016, the primary focus of NCN’s New York and San Francisco Investor Meetings. NCN tracked 60 financings in Branded Food & Beverage in January-June 2016 compared to 103 in all of 2015, itself a record year and more than three times the average annual number of equity investments in food and beverage companies in the years 2010-2014.

Other segments with notable changes in activity the first six months of 2016 included:

• Investment activity in Biotech & Agtech is growing the fastest of any category in financing, posting 47 investment transactions in 2016, already ahead of 40 in all of 2016.
• Financing in Branded Food & Beverage has increased in pace in 2016 but the average investment fell to $5.8 million, half of 2015’s average of $11.6 million, as investors increasingly align to invest in earlier stage companies and as the number of companies of scale remains finite.
• M&A in branded Natural, Organic and Functional Food remained strong at 36 transactions, but slowed compared to 100 closed in 2015.
• 10 M&A transactions were recorded in Supplements so far in 2016, compared to 10 in all of 2015.
• 17 M&A transactions were recorded in Ingredients so far in 2016, compared to 22 in both 2014 and 2015.
• 19 M&A transactions were recorded in Retail & Distribution so far in 2016, compared to 9-11 in each year from 2010-2015.
• Overall, 120 M&A transactions were recorded across the nutrition and health and wellness industry so far in 2016, compared to 247 in all of 2015, or a decline of 3% compared to the 2015 annualized rate.
• Technology financings in health and wellness took off in 2014 and 2015, going from 41 in 2013 to 112 in 2014 to 173 in 2015, but leveled in the first half of 2016 to 81, or a 6% decline from 2015’s pace.
• The biggest drop-offs occurred in Technology: Apps, Information, Media and in Technology: Delivery Service, the two sub-segments that had mostly paced the record growth in all Technology the previous two years.
• Investments in Technology: Analytical, Diagnostic & Monitoring Devices matched 2015’s total in just the first six months of 2016, with E-Commerce leveling.

“We appreciate the high profile transactions that put the $260-billion U.S. nutrition and health & wellness industry in the mainstream financial press,” said Grant Ferrier is CEO and Principal of Nutrition Capital Network and Co-Chair of NCN Investor Meetings, “but the lifeblood of the industry, and the focus of our network are the smaller high-growth companies, particularly in branded products and ingredient science, where a broad base of entrepreneurs are devoting themselves to bringing health and wellness into the mainstream.”