Natural Ingredients

The government can put in P1 billion for facilities that can give rise to an industry-scale natural ingredients production in the country. A private firm, Secura International, suggests that the Philippines should focus on tapping its rich biodiversity in order to create a niche using local herbs like malunggay and banaba. This can capture big markets such as the $8 billion anti-obesity market worldwide. Given authentic profitability from this industry, government can support planting of these herbs and construction of needed facilities, according to Dr. Reynaldo V. Ebora, director of the Philipine Council for Advanced Science and Technology Research and Development. “Even if the amount is large, if we can justify it’s worth investing in… we will be wiling to help,” said Ebora. Secura International President Danilo M. Manayaga said the country should zero in on the production of natural herbs since the country has unique comparative edge in planting these. Such businesses can become 100 % Filipino-owned and help uplift living levels of most farmers. “We need to have (something) like Filipinovation, 100 % Filipino-(owned ventures). We’ll export only the (higher-valued) finished product, said Manayaga. “We have 1,200 candidates which can be good for active pharmaceutical ingredients. Right now companies focus on these which are candidates for producing drugs. Natural products are the base molecule. You just add these to be used in pharmaceutical products, and there are many products in the markets (prepared this way).” Singapore and Malaysia invested $2 billion each for similar production facilities for these natural ingredients while Thailand put in $ 1 billion, and the country should do the same, Manayaga said. Banaba, for one, produces corosolic acid which is being used by US companies as an anti-obesity drug ingredient. “Our farmers sell their banaba leaves to Chinese companies (which) extract the active ingredient in concentrate and then sell this to Japan. Japan purifies it and sells it to US companies,” he said. Another profitable venture the country is missing is the export of papain from papaya used in many food preparations. Secura had already entered in an agreement to supply papain to Belgian firm Enzybel which supplies 80 % of the world’s 1,200 metric ton (MT) papain requirement using the papaya ingredient from tropical countries. “(Unfortunately) I wasn’t able to supply to the Belgian company at (the agreed volume of) 10 tons a year because our farmers are not responding to our needs,” he said. Filipino farmers find it wasteful to extract papain from the surface of the green papaya and then throw away the rest of the fruit just because there are no other developed uses for the rest of the fruit. But product research may actually give solution to this problem. The country needs to support this industry by providing for a laboratory facility and a pilot processing facility that will comply with Good Manufacturing Practice for natural ingredients production. The other big problem of course is expanding production of these herbs such as malunggay which is really proven to be technically viable as a biodiesel feedstock but whose local production is very limited. Secura has already partnered with the Iowa state to study the incorporation of malunggay oil for many uses. Aside from its use for many nutraceutical products, malunggay has important use for the livestock industry. “(If we develop malunggay), we will not anymore import soybean meal which we import at 1.3 million tons yearly. (We can use malunggay) for our dairy, and make our dairy industry profitable (with malunggay leaves used as feed meal). There’s a study in Sweden where they used only two kilos per day of malunggay leaves and increased 30 percent of milk production. “We have to support the farmers. The farmers are already sold out (to these ideas but need financing for planting malungay). We still need to plant more (malunggay). Everybody should be planting,” Manayaga said.----------