Health & Beauty

Recently, the price of some medicinal materials has increased significantly. Among them, the price of natural bezoar, the main ingredient of Angong Niuhuang Pill and Pianzi Huang, has increased by more than 900000 yuan/kg, and the price of medicinal materials such as Shayuanzi, Brucea javanica, Peony Peel, and Aster has almost doubled.

According to industry insiders, due to problems such as insufficient scale, depletion of wild resources, and lack of quality control on the supply side, the prices of some traditional Chinese medicinal materials are still in the upward path. Once the market has formed consensus expectations for this, leading to hoarding and speculation, it will further amplify price fluctuations. Therefore, to solve this problem, it is necessary to pool the efforts of multiple parties to effectively solve it.

Overall price fluctuation slows down

According to the Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation Report, as of February 2023, the Comprehensive 200 Index of Chinese Medicinal Materials stood at 3000 points, an increase of nearly 5% compared to the end of December 2022. From the past week (March 5 to March 11), out of the 2650 varieties monitored by the Tiandi Yuntu Big Data Center for the Chinese Medicine Industry (including the same variety with different product specifications and different origins, the same below), the number of increased varieties was 90, the number of decreased varieties was 54, and the prices of the remaining varieties were flat.

The sharp rise in the price of medicinal materials is affected by multiple factors, including weather disasters, increased market demand, and so on. At the end of 2022, there was a significant increase in the price of traditional Chinese medicine, which caused the supply of medicines for relieving cold symptoms to exceed demand, leading to a price increase. Among the categories with recent price increases, Chinese medicinal materials such as rhizomes and fruits, seeds and kernels account for a relatively large proportion, accounting for 52% and 31% respectively.

According to the Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation Report, overall, the price fluctuation of Chinese medicinal materials in 2023 has significantly decreased compared to 2022. On the one hand, due to the significant fluctuations in the prices of Chinese medicinal materials before, purchasing merchants have taken a cautious attitude, placing more emphasis on actual digestion ability when taking goods, and the market mentality has begun to trend towards rationality.

"Previously, the production capacity of epidemic prevention raw materials has increased significantly, and businesses and production enterprises generally believe that their risk coefficient is on the high side. The demand for raw materials is mainly based on actual demand, and the phenomenon of blind hoarding has been relatively reduced." An insider told reporters.

On the other hand, the overcapacity of some Chinese medicinal materials is emerging. A pharmaceutical dealer who has been working for many years revealed to reporters that although in recent years some powerful pharmaceutical manufacturers have begun to obtain major upstream Chinese medicinal resources through self cultivation or cooperative cultivation with local farmers, their proportion in the overall market is still low, and the situation of "crowding up and crowding up" still occurs frequently.

When the price of a certain type of Chinese medicinal material on the market is relatively high, some medicinal material growers choose to plant this type of Chinese medicinal material, but it often takes some time for the Chinese medicinal material to mature. If the supply suddenly increases, but the demand does not change much, the situation of "cheap medicine harms farmers" is inevitable.

Insufficient supply of medicinal animal resources

Among various types of Chinese medicinal materials, the prices of plant based Chinese medicinal materials fluctuate greatly, while the prices of animal based Chinese medicinal materials continue to rise.

According to public information, China has over 120000 species of traditional Chinese medicine resources, including nearly 2215 species of medicinal animals, accounting for approximately 18% of all traditional Chinese medicine resources. Animal drugs have a long history of application in China, characterized by wide resources, strong activity, good efficacy, and great benefits. They have great potential and important position in the consumption market of Chinese medicinal materials, and their clinical effects and efficacy cannot be replaced.

With the acceleration of economic development and urbanization in China, the resources of wild medicinal animals are rapidly depleted. From the year 2000 to the 2020 edition of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia, the proportion of Chinese medicinal materials for animals received and loaded has decreased from 9.47% to 5.43%. However, there are 1491 kinds of traditional Chinese patent medicines and simple preparations preparations recorded in the 2020 edition of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia, including 342 kinds of animal raw material preparations, accounting for 22.94%.

Among the 2650 varieties monitored by the Big Data Center of Tiandi Yuntu Traditional Chinese Medicine Industry (including the same variety, different product specifications, and different origins), there are 105 types of animal traditional Chinese medicine. Among them, 71 species of raw materials mainly come from wild resources, including gecko, cuttlebone, stone cassia, centipede, and cuttlebone, accounting for 67.62%; 25 kinds of silkworm, such as bombyx batryticatus, cocoon, ass hide glue, and corn worm, mainly come from domestic resources, accounting for 23.81%; There are 9 kinds of wild and domestic resources available, including swim bladder, pearl, musk, bezoar, and tortoiseshell, accounting for 8.57%.

In the section of "Strengthening the Construction of High standard Farmland", the No. 1 central document released earlier expressed the expression of "severely cracking down on soil destroying behaviors such as illegal digging of black soil and electric earthworm catching", which triggered widespread concern and discussion on earthworms, and Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation Report.

Earthworm, also known as "earthworm", is a traditional Chinese medicine. According to the Chinese Pharmacopoeia, it has the functions of "clearing heat and calming convulsions, dredging collaterals, relieving asthma, and diuresis.". Modern research has also shown that earthworms can also greatly help alleviate symptoms such as convulsions and hypertension, and are one of the important raw materials for the production of drugs for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. In terms of flow direction, most earthworms enter pharmaceutical companies, as reported by Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation.

With the strengthening of national efforts to protect wild animals and the need for ecological civilization, the protection and sustainable utilization of wild resources of animal medicinal materials have become increasingly important and urgent issues to be addressed in the industry.

Breaking the game still requires multiple approaches

"The insufficient supply of pure natural raw materials will, of course, lead to extremely scarce market demand." The head of the marketing department of a listed Chinese traditional medicine enterprise told reporters, for example, as the core raw materials for Angong Niuhuang products, the annual market supply of natural Niuhuang and natural musk can only meet 10% to 15% of the market demand.

The same is true for botanical Chinese medicinal materials. "Oranges born in Huainan are oranges, while those born in Huaibei are trifoliate orange." The medicinal properties of traditional Chinese medicines from different origins determine their medicinal properties. Currently, although traditional Chinese medicine raw material growers also have large-scale cultivation, the overall model is still a small-scale peasant economy, with the situation of mixing authentic medicinal materials from different origins. In addition, some Chinese medicinal materials still need to be picked in the wild, and the quality control and traceability of Chinese medicinal materials still have a long way to go.

"There are still bottlenecks in the development of domestic breeding technology, leading to the fact that most varieties still need to be supplied by wild resources, which has virtually accelerated the rate of depletion of wild resources. Even if the technological bottleneck is broken, the cost of domestic breeding for many varieties remains high, and the scale of domestic breeding is still in the small-scale pilot stage, with no regulations to model farming. This is the same principle for both animal and plant medicinal materials," said the interviewed medicinal material dealer to the reporter, Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation Report.

"Leading enterprises adhering to the use of natural raw materials will undoubtedly be under pressure from the significant increase in raw material costs. From another perspective, the scientific research and development of artificial bezoar and artificial musk have been carried out for decades, and the technology is becoming increasingly mature." The above interviewee believes that in the case of natural sources cannot be guaranteed, production enterprises should take precautions and carry out artificial replacement work from natural sources to adapt to the expanding market demand. The emergence of artificial cultivated products such as artificial bezoar and artificial musk has largely filled the market gap caused by insufficient supply of natural raw materials. Currently, the market share of this artificial cultivated product is close to 90%.