BY-HEALTH’s US$500m capital drive: Plans for new sites and personalised health management centre revealed

The injection of new funds will also provide additional capital liquidity. 

The company said in a statement that the bulk of the capital raised would go into the building of its Zhuhai production base project which is entering its fifth construction phase. The project will require an investment of RMB$1.5bn (US$220m).

The parent firm of well-known Australian probiotics firm Life-Space also said that the funds would be used to build a production site in Australia, upgrading works at the fourth construction phase of its Zhuhai site, a nutrition and health management centre, and a digitalised system.  

The fifth construction phase of the Zhuhai production base will build a plant extract centre and a production site for tablets, powder, soft capsule, liquids, and probiotics products.

The project will take four years to complete. 

Once completed, the company believes that the production base will help it cater to healthy ageing demands and provide a wider range of product formats.

The base will also provide capabilities that its current facility does not have in processing its own plant extracts. Such processing is currently contracted to third party manufacturers.

At present, the company sources its raw materials from 23 countries, including Brazil, Australia and said it has put in place a traceability system for these materials.

As for the fourth construction phase of the Zhuhai project, it will upgrade the factory according to Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standards.

The factory is expected to officially operate in September this year, following a construction period of 24 months.

It will ramp up production of tablets, powder, and bottled products to resolve bottlenecks that the firm is currently facing.

“To address the impacts brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, the company has come up with the relevant measures, spanning across procurement, production, sales activities.​

“Through the implementation of this project, we plan to strengthen the extend of our control over supply chain, in order to increase the company’s ability in risk buffering,”​ the company said.

Filling the gap in low tier cities ​

With more pharmacies opening in the low tier Chinese cities, the company is also aiming to further extend its presence into these regions.

As of 2018, the company’s portfolio took away five of the top 10 bestseller spots in pharmacies across China’s cities.

In recent years, it has also started to enter mum-and-baby stores and supermarket chains.

Melbourne site​

The company has identified Melbourne as the location for its production base in Australia.

Spanning across 48 months, the production base will be converted from an existing building to construct probiotics and dietary supplement manufacturing lines.

The probiotics manufactured will come in bottled powder, sachet, and hard capsule.

At present, the probiotic specialist arm of BY-HEALTH – Life-Space makes its products via contract manufacturers, but this also comes with the problem of a longer supply chain cycle, higher capital cost, and quality control.

The new site will thus help to reduce reliance on contract manufacturers and speed up product development. 

Aside from Life-Space, BY-HEALTH is also testing the waters for children’s nutrition brand Pentavite and the international version of BY-HEALTH in Australia.

Nutrition management centre​

With the aim of providing health management, anti-ageing, the health and nutrition management centre will provide testing, diagnostics, and personalised intervention services.

Through the project, the company hopes to upgrade its relationships with customers beyond that of product purchase.

The centre will also be located in Zhuhai and construction is expected to take 24 months.