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Exporters from developing countries supported by CBI and BTFP exhibit their natural ingredients at the CPHI trade fair

 Madrid, Spain 1-3 November 2005

Ten companies enrolled in the CBI´s export development programme for natural ingredients for pharmaceuticals and cosmetics presented their product at the international trade fair CPhI.

CPhI Worldwide is a comprehensive exhibition of manufacturers of active pharmaceutical ingredients, intermediates, excipients and natural extracts. The first CPhI in 1990 attracted 250 visitors for 16 companies, while nowadays around 20,000 industry professionals visit some 1,500 exhibiting companies from over 110 countries around the world.

Companies are from Colombia, El Salvador, Peru, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Uganda. BTFP supports companies in Colombia, Peru and Uganda. All products on display – some well-known and some new – were of natural origin and derived from sustainably managed sources. The high-quality products range from medicinal extracts, fatty and essential oils to colouring agents.

 International cooperation

The CBI presentation at CPhI has close links with the UNCTAD BioTrade Facilitation Programme (BTFP). In earlier stages of the programme, the two worked together on company issues such as business planning and sustainable supply chain management. Now they are working also on establishing market links for the participating companies through the B2B programme. The participation at CPhI is part of an intensive programme aimed at brokering partnerships between the CBI participants and EU companies.  

Private Sector and BTFP partners meet to discuss on differentiation of BioTrade Natural Ingredients in the international markets

 Madrid, Spain 31^st October 2005

“How do we distinguish and position BioTrade natural ingredients from others that would seem to be identical but are produced in a less biodiversity-responsible way?”. This was the key question of a meeting where options to develop a scheme which enables the certification or recognition of BioTrade principles and criteria were discussed. 

BioTrade natural ingredients are obtained from those activities of collection, production, transformation, and commercialisation of goods and services derived from native biodiversity under criteria of environmental, social and economic sustainability.

Recognising that no-existing certification scheme fully covers the BioTrade principles and criteria and that establishing a new scheme is a costly and time consuming exercise, a number of components towards a certification system were proposed. The four key components were:

• a BioTrade B2B Club, including producers and buyers, to build a committed BioTrade community;

• a set of flagship BioTrade natural ingredients or services to certify and strengthen the case for BioTrade;

• individual road maps to move companies from self-monitoring to verification (usually by buyers or investors) to certification (by independent third parties); and

• strategic linkages with existing certification schemes as appropriate (FSC+, MAC+, MSC+, etc).