BUSINESS BITS

Herbal teas and supplements
Prime Sarmiento

The Philippine herbal industry is now worth about P3 billion, and will continue to grow at a fast clip given the steady increase in demand for natural health products, says Lito Abelarde, president of the Chamber of Herbal Industries of the Philippines of the Philippines, Inc. (CHIP).

Abelarde notes that this boom in alternative health products is not just a local phenomenon, as the world Health Organization has reported that the global health industry is growing at a robust rate as well and is now valued at $60 billion. Herbal products – most of them marketed as natural food supplements, - are made up of either the fruit, root, bark of leaves of known medicinal plants which were dried, crushed, powdered, and processed into herbal teas and capsules and are sold as complements to pharmaceutical drugs.

Abelarde’s company, Herbcare Corp., is one of the leading manufacturers of ampalaya-based herbal products. Herbcare, through its brand name, Charantia, produces ampalaya loose bits, teabags, and capsules consumed mainly by diabetics as dietary supplements. A box of Charantia that contains 20 tea bags now retails at P160.

“People just can’t take ampalaya’s bitterness, so they have an alternative to take it in tea form,” he says.

Lito and his son Daniel saw the potential in producing dietary food supplements when requests from diabetic friends who were living abroad for them to ship dried ampalaya became numerous. Father and son did some research and raised less than P1 million before they up Herbcare in January 2000, with Charantia Ampalaya Loose Bits as their first products.

The Abelardes sold P2 million worth of loose bits in its first year alone, encouraging them to expand their product line. Six years later, Herbcare hs grown to a multimillion-peso concerns, offering three diabetic products for the local and foreign markets.

Sixty-year-old Ramon Tan was the first to harness the power of medicinal plants and fruits when he put up Carica Herbal Health Products Inc. in 1996. A strong advocate of anything natural, Tan’s company manufacturers a wide array of food supplements made from various fruits and vegetables. Tan says that the herbal industry can overtake and eventually take the place of the P100-billion pharmaceutical industry. “I can’t think of anything better than herbal health products,” he says.

A former corporate executive, Tan got into this business by accident. A Japanese businessman asked Tan to supply him with papaya enzyme as this was considered a health food in Japan . Tan took some wild unripe papaya from the family farm in Quezon, made a litter of papaya extracts out of it, and started shipping it to his friend every three months.

“I didn’t believe in it, I was just doing it for my friend,” he says. Tan got curious when his friend kept asking him for the extract, and thought Filipinos could also benefit from it. Tan started experimenting with the extract by fermenting it and adding sugar to the mixture.

His neighbors whom he had asked to sample the syrup told him it helped them with the ailments. Encouraged, Tan and his sister plunked down P10,000 a year after he started making the papaya concoctions to produce several bottles of papaya syrup, candies, and teabags, tan picked the brand name Carica, which is part of papaya’s scientific name, Carica papaya.

The siblings put up their first stall in Makati , which broke even only after a month, thanks to word of mouth. Carica is now a P100-million company whose plant in Quezon produces millions of bottles of syrup, teabags, and capsules monthly for sale through distributors here and abroad.

Tan says it’s not difficult to go into this business. The raw materials are readily available and there’s a big market for it. Those with limited capital can start by signing up as dealers of recognized herbal brands like Carica’s. those with the resources to tap the traditional distribution channels – pharmacies, health food stores, and supermarkets – can follow Herbcare’s example by being the manufacturer and whosesaler at the same time.

Abelarde has this advise to those wanting to go into the same business: “Find out what are the primary diseases in this country and the herbal plants that can cure these diseases, and make products out of them.”

But whether one wants to be a dealer or a manufacturer, tan says what’s important is that the entrepreneur himself uses and believes in the product’s efficacy. “You have to believe in it. If you don’t, you will fail,” he says.