John DeSimone, the company’s chief financial officer told NutraIngredientsUSA.com: “The new extraction plant will produce botanical extracts including teas, guarana, chamomile, broccoli and bilberry, among others, for use in many of our products.”
The facility is a joint venture with NatSource Chemicals.
Manufacturing facilities
The facility will buy botanicals directly from farms in Hunan province and other regions, he added. “The plant will perform extraction and other conversion processes and then send these processed raw materials directly to our manufacturing facilities in Suzhou, China and Lake Forest, California or to our third party manufacturers throughout the world.”
The company uses botanicals in many of its nutrition products, including Herbal Tea Concentrate,
Liftoff energy drink; Best Defense and Garden 7.
Expected to open in the second half of next year, Herbalife says the new plant is part of its seed-to-feed strategy designed to ensure the quality, purity, and traceability on all ingredients throughout its supply chain.
The 80,000 sq. ft. facility at Changsha in Hunan Province is expected to have the capacity to process 8,000t annually and to create about 120 jobs.
Changsha is in southern central China and was chosen because of its strategic location on the banks of the Yangtze River; close to the home of many of the China’s nutritional herbs and botanicals.
The project is receiving funding from the Hunan provincial and Changsha City governments.
Supply agreements
Herbalife is also planning strategic supply agreements with farmers in Hunan and other provinces to guarantee further the traceability for its health ingredients.
The company received its first direct-selling license in China in March 2007 and is now licensed to sell direct in 16 provinces.
In addition it operates 75 retail stores in 30 provinces in China. It operates in 72 other countries through a network of about 2.1m independent distributors.