Are «medicinal herbs» really a thing?

People’s interest for a healthy lifestyle is tremendously increasing nowadays. More people are practicing some type of sports and consequently want a better nutrition plan. The interest for knowing health benefits for each food sources has been increasing among those consumers who follow a good healthy lifestyle. Therefore, European consumers started to pay attention to medicinal herbs or health beneficial plants due to their vast advantage for health. The word “medicinal plant” may sounds unfamiliar to some of consumers, however, they may already have tried them in their life. Medicinal herbs can be easily found in tea, health supplements, or even used in some ordinary meals. Here is the list of known medicinal herbs that you might have tried of or heard of; saffron, mint, ginseng, chamomile, green tea, etc.

Medicinal herbs are consumed in two big markets; pharmaceutical business for producing medicine and general consumers for their home use.

With the recovery in the consumer health product market and the increasing market of medicinal herbs, this market can be an interesting topic for those who are seeking a new market potentials. Health beneficial plants are gaining its importance with bigger interest and demand towards to it. Also, we can see the recovery of consumption in the consumer health product market in Spain and there is a high level of consumption in the health products to complement their healthy lifestyle or to treat some minor health problems. (Euromonitor International, 2016) And for pharmaceutical businesses, medicinal herbs are a great opportunity to innovate their medicine with natural ingredient base that can give better medicinal benefit for patients and with reduced side effects. Also, increasing interest in bio or ecological product has also increased interest towards medicinal plants. Furthermore, consumers who are interested in ecological product tends to search more information towards each ingredient and the benefit for health. Therefore, medicinal plants are regaining its attention among those consumers.

The major benefit of the medicinal herbs is its easy access for consumers to purchase and its usage. Consumers do not need any special prescription to purchase medicinal herbs. Medicinal herbs are available in many different forms (syrups, extracts, oils, pills, capsules or the plant itself) and in different distribution channel in the form of offline and online.

Recently, herbal shops or health food shops can be easily seen in the city center or in shopping center. Consumers are now more familiarized with medicinal herbs and appreciating them better than before with knowing their beneficial facts. There is no doubt that medicinal plant is a growing market with people’s bigger interest in well-being lifestyle and there is a great market potential growth in the future. What would be your business idea with taking advantage of this growing medicinal plant market?

FyG Consultores

We invite you to join our project related to business in the medicinal herbs’ sector, Innovative Integrated Training in Healing Plants Business:

https://www.facebook.com/pg/HealingPlantsErasmusPlus/about/?tab=page_info