PETALING JAYA: Integrated health supplement company Bioalpha Holdings Bhd wholly owned subsidiary Bioalpha (Hainan) Development Ltd has entered into a collaboration agreement with Gaolin Village Council to jointly develop Gaolin Village in Hainan province, China, to be named Malaysian Agricultural Hub.
The village is located with easy accessibility to Hainan’s capital city of Haikou and central city of Ding’an Country via expressways. It has been approved for commercial and agricultural activities.
The development of the hub, which will be spearheaded by Bioalpha, will entail the construction of a complex consisting of 30 factories. The hub will have an initial paid-up capital of 10 million yuan (RM6.6 million) and authorised capital of 50 million yuan (RM33 million).
The initial phase of the hub focuses on the upstream and downstream activities such as formulation, manufacturing and even commercialisation of functional food products using Malaysian indigenous and tropical herbs, such as Misai Kucing and Kacip Fatimah, targeted for local Chinese market. In addition, the hub enables other Malaysian agricultural players such as manufacturers of durian and cocoa products to venture into China by investing and stationing at the hub.
Bioalpha managing director William Hon said Malaysian Agricultural Hub is a unique model that focuses on the complete integration supply chain for Malaysian agricultural products.
“With the hub, we can conduct research and development (R&D) activities, formulate and manufacture our herbal-based products as well as eventually commercialise products under one roof for the Chinese market. This would provide the local Chinese population immediate access to our products as well as allows the group to better gauge the domestic demand in order to roll out related products in the shortest time possible. For future phases, we may even plant our indigenous herbs as this could reduce logistics costs of importing raw materials from overseas.
“With the R&D and manufacturing facility setup within the hub, we can expand our existing capacity to cater to rising orders in respect of our health food supply contract. Moreover, we can also source the region’s agricultural produce to enhance the group’s range of offerings moving forward. This ultimately strengthens our foothold in China and allows us to meet our sales target.”
To recap, Bioalpha has a supply contract to deliver health food ingredients to customers in Guizhou, China. These ingredients will be utilised to prepare health food and nutritional meals for the private and public sectors there.
The group will adopt the best practices in the operations as it strives to attain local and internal accreditations including Good Manufacturing Practice and Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point.
The R&D centre will enable Bioalpha to formulate and test products using herbs from the Southeast Asian region, as well as China. This ensures the regular rollouts of offerings are well-suited for the Chinese masses.
“As the anchor company of the hub, we will also serve as the link to companies in Malaysia that wish to market their products in China and assist in providing services such as R&D, manufacturing and commercialisation. This opens up the lucrative Chinese market for Malaysian companies seeking to expand to China.”
With the establishment of the hub in Hainan, Bioalpha is eligible for tax incentives and exemption under China’s Overall Plan for the Construction of Hainan Free Trade Port. Meanwhile, the land lease is valid for 30 years from the date of signing, with an option to extend.
