SAMUT PRAKAN, Thailand — A publicly listed company here is open to partnerships with companies in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, for cooperation and partnerships to supply the growing global market for processed and standardized plant-based ingredients used in various industries.
The company — publicly listed Specialty Natural Products Public Company Ltd. (SNPS) — standardizes Thai and Asian botanicals into extracts for the global pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, functional food, and cosmetic industries.
SNPS’ subsidiary — Specialty Innovation Co. Ltd. (SI) — takes it a step further through formulation, product development, registration support, and OEM (original equipment manufacturer)/ODM (original design manufacturer) of finished supplements, functional products, traditional medicines, and personal care goods.
“We would rather share a large regional plate than defend a small national one,” said SNPS chief executive Dr. Theeraya Krisdaphong.
“Bring us the plant that grows in your country. We will bring the standardization, the analytics. and the factory. The market we are trying to win is not in Bangkok or Jakarta or Manila. It is in Europe, the United States, and Japan, and no single Asean country wins it alone,” she added.
Asean is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
SNPS is open to the following:
– Joint development of natural colors and natural-based food additives suited to regional formulations, climates, and regulatory conditions;
– Contract manufacturing, ODM, and formulation support through SI for brand owners in each Asean market; and
– Shared technical and safety dossiers, to facilitate cross-border registration.
Krisdaphong said that a country gains very little if its exports plant materials with minimal value adding.
“A country that exports dried plant material and imports finished ingredients has agreed to keep the smallest slice of its own value,” she said.
“Everything that makes an ingredient valuable — the standardization, the analytics, the safety file, the formulation — happens after the farm gate. That is the part we built here. That is the part Asean can build together,” she added.
Among the clients of SNPS are multinational firms manufacturing personal care products such as soap and toothpaste.
The publicly listed company said that Asean has the advantage in biology and not its labor cost. And the region’s tropical climate allows the year-round growing of plants that cannot be grown in temperate countries. Among these are butterfly pea, turmeric, annatto, gardenia, roselle, pandan, and sappan.
SNPS said that Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand each hold different parts of the region’s biological portfolio.
Currently, SNPS sources its raw materials from around 300 farmers who cultivate their plants based on standards set by the company. With the growing market for processed plant-based ingredients, SNPS projects its farmer-partners to reach 1,000 in the next years.
Market for natural coloring
The publicly listed company now sees a big market for natural coloring as global companies are gradually phasing out synthetic coloring, presenting an opportunity for Asean member states to be a major supplier of plant-based dyes and similar ingredients.
However, natural colors still largely do not have the qualities of synthetic colors, which are less costly to produce, stable, and with predictable qualities. These present challenges for manufacturers of plant-based ingredients.
“Natural colors shift with heat, light, pH and time, vary with the harvest, and ask far more of the manufacturer standing behind them,” SNPS said.
“That difficulty is exactly why the opportunity is worth holding onto,” it added.
SNPS and SI will take part in Vitafoods Asia 2026, the premier nutraceutical event in Asia organized by Informa Markets, to be held at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Center in Bangkok, Thailand, from Sept. 2 to 4, 2026.
This year’s edition is seen as the largest to date with a net exhibit space of 20,000 square meters and over 800 participating companies.