The supply chain of herbal medicine is extremely complex. At Herbprime we go to great lengths to combat the major issues of supply, namely adulteration, contamination and unreliable quality / efficacy.

Our major supplier is Sun Ten Pharmaceuticals of Taiwan, a world-renowned company which has been in business for over 70 years. While many suppliers buy from giant herb markets, these spaces give rise to major opportunities for adulteration or mislabelling of herbs. Therefore wherever possible Sun Ten buy directly from the farmers, shortening the supply chain and ensuring consistency of product. Not only this, but their relationships with farmers allow them to experiment with innovations in agriculture, increasing both the yield and the efficacy of the herbs produced. 

Once the herbs are grown they are sent to Sun Ten’s state of the art, cGMP certified factory to be turned into the granulation medicines so widely used today. One full third of the factory staff work in quality control, utilising a huge array of methods to test herbs. This starts from the simple, visual examinations and microscopes, to the complex, such as PCR testing for genetic matching and high performance liquid chromatography to ensure the correct levels of medically active components are present in each batch of herbs.

We owe a great debt to the environment that produces the wonderful herbs we use every day, and as such we want to give back where we can. Sun Ten are involved in an ongoing effort to reduce their carbon footprint through increasingly efficient production methods, plastic reduction and supporting of charities.

All of our herbs come from sustainable sources. The last thing we want is to overuse one of these natural medicines to the point where it is no longer available. We support ecologically-aware growers and suppliers and are particularly proud of Sun Ten’s efforts with dendrobium / Shi Hu as an example of this.

Shi Hu is a CITES Appendix II plant, so therefore its harvesting needs to be strictly monitored. After years of efforts Sun Ten were able to grow Shi Hu natively in Taiwan by facilitating a symbiotic relationship between it and the indigenous betel nut trees, an important step in the road for creating a sustainable source of this wonderful medicinal herb, and a fantastic story of how the herbal medicine industry can support and give back to the environment.

Our products are medical equipment, and therefore a balance must always be struck between packaging that is sterile and long-lasting, and packaging that is environmentally friendly. However we are very proud of the advances we have made of the past several years in eco-friendly packaging that meets all possible usage requirements.