Hobby to profession
Prior to pursuing aquaculture in the University of the Philippines ( UP) Diliman, Cruz was an agriculture major at UP Los Baños. He was familiar with growing herbal plants, naming his new venture Herbanext Laboratories, whose goal was to bring Philippine medicinal herbs to the next level. For his efforts to promote spray- dried herbal extracts, he was named one of The Outstanding Young Men of the Philippines in 2005.
“My entry to herbal products was through a [ medicinal] mushroom known as
which has over a thousand- year history of use in the Orient,” Cruz narrates. “At first, growing the mushroom was just a hobby. I took it as a food supplement for myself to help address my high cholesterol and gout. The supplement worked very well and allowed me to drop by anti- cholesterol and anti- gout drugs.”
Eventually, Cruz and his wife Ruby decided to make a business out of his hobby. Since he knew very little about medicinal plants, he started attending international conferences. “A particular session that opened my eyes was the 5th International Medicinal Mushroom Conference in Shanghai, China in 2009. There, I met a lot of scientists and medical doctors from all over the world who were studying the medicinal applications of different species of medicinal mushrooms.
When Herbanext Laboratories was established, it started as a small business enterprise. Subsequently, it underwent major transformation in 2006. With the help of the Department of Science and Technology (DoST), the company expanded even further in the years that followed. As it enters into its twodecade run next year, Cruz cannot be any prouder with the success of Herbanext Laboratories.
“When we established Herbanext in 2001, we had one thing clear in our mind — we wanted to develop a science-based herbal company that made use of standardized extracts of Filipino medicinal plants,” Cruz maintains. “We knew all along that we wanted to do was not going to be easy, because nobody has done it before, and we had to start from scratch. What we learned early on was that to succeed quickly in this arena, we would have to invest heavily in a sustained marketing campaign.”
However, Cruz decided instead to plow his funds into research and development and invested in modernizing the company’s equipment and facilities. Thus, Cruz describes the first five years of Herbanext as merely just a “backyard operation” in a 400- square meter area. The succeeding years saw the plant steadily growing.
“In 2011, we saw a 1,200-square-meter plant,” Cruz beams. “On our 20th year next year, as we expand our toll manufacturing operations, I expect to have a plant area of at least 3,600 square meters for the manufacture of herbal extracts, herbal drugs, food supplements and cosmetic products.”