Growing supply chain

AQUACULTURE was far from any course that

Philip S. Cruz considered during his university days. But after encountering fishpond operators during a one- day conference, he was hooked.

He worked on his new obsession, building automatic fish feeders and typhoon- resistant sea cages, and developed the now- popular mariculture park technology, among other innovations. However, the industry landscape changed in the late 1990s.

“I saw Philippine aquaculture was rapidly losing competitiveness globally,” Cruz recalls. “So, in 2001, I decided to diversify my business and research interest into herbal products and established Herbanext Laboratories.”

Cruz is openly grateful for the help extended by the DoST to Herbanext Laboratories to raise its game and upgrade the company’s manufacturing plant more than 10 years ago. Herbanext availed of an interest- free loan from DoST Region 6 through the Small Enterprise Technology Upgrading Program ( DoST- Setup) in 2007 and again in 2012,” Cruz discloses. “Both loans were used to acquire modern manufacturing equipment for processing medicinal herbs.

For the past 19 years, Herbanext, which operates from its base in Bago City, Negros Occidental since its inception in 2001, has been successful in developing a supply chain for raw materials that befitted small farmers and marginalized communities. That is particularly important in Negros Island, which relies heavily on sugar cane, a crop that is viable only in large- scale farming operations,” Cruz says. “That turned out easier than done, because it is not really possible to create any significant socio- economic impact to the supply chain, unless we are able to buy large quantities of raw materials.”

To create such large demand of raw materials, Cruz acknowledges that his company needs to bring herbal products to the level of