With botanical ingredients, brand owners are invited to navigate a multicoloured landscape of fast-moving novelty and opportunity from around the world, but also hidden risk—including regulatory inconsistencies, food fraud, and overall quality issues. Paul Gander assesses this dynamic sector.
In developed economies, there is a perception of herbal and other botanical ingredients as playing a secondary, ‘alternative’ role to mainstream medicine. The World Health Organization estimates that between 70% and 80% of the global population are dependent on herbal preparations for the prevention and treatment of disease.
This figure, quoted by Polaris Market Research, underscores that for the majority of the world’s population, plant-based sources remain the first—and often only—line of defence against poor health.
Western markets are witnessing a reappraisal of this sector, with the benefits of more botanical active ingredients being better-understood. US-based consultant David Foreman, known as the Herbal Pharmacist, contrasts current levels of interest in botanicals with the state of the market 10 or 12 years ago when, he says, it was widely considered ‘dead,’ or at least dormant.
“Over the last four years or so, the market has been exploding,” he claims. “We’re seeing the rebirth of ingredients that have been around for thousands of years. Indigenous peoples have been using botanicals all that time, and it’s only now that modern science is able to dig deeper into how and why these ingredients work, and figure out why they’ve kept using them.”
According to a 2020 report from Polaris , the worldwide herbal medicines market was valued at US$84.5 billion in 2019. It estimates that compound annual growth (CAGR) of a rosy 20.5% will take its value to $411.2 billion by 2026.
Of course, there are different ways of analysing and measuring the contribution of botanical ingredients to the dietary supplements market. Analysts at University of Brighton, UK, quoting Grand View Research last year put the projected revenues of the global alternative and complementary medicines market at $196.87 billion for 2025. The market was valued at $40.32 billion in 2015, they said. This 2020 analysis provided an additional perspective on this multi-faceted sector by putting its own estimate for the size of the herbal medicine market at $71.2 billion.
Another way of appreciating the dynamic role played by botanicals is to look at specific cultural traditions in this area. This University of Brighton analysis from last year, for example, put the size of the global Ayurvedic medicine market at $75 billion for 2019, growing at a CAGR of 6.6%.
In its own 2020 report, Research and Markets, on the other hand, assessed the size of India’s Ayurveda market to be $4.11 billion in 2018, increasing at a CAGR of over 16% to reach a value of $9.75 billion by 2024. As well as dietary elements, these valuations included personal care products and services. Consumer goods of all types were estimated to account for some 74% of market value.