Complete production cycle

Nature is the best doctor. Most advanced modern chemical laboratories are not able to synthesize compounds so diverse in their structure, as nature does. Herbal substances often serve as model samples, which the chemists artificially recreate or purposely modify through the processes of semi-syntheses. Herbal medicinal products have another advantage: they are better tolerated and have fewer side effects.

Herbal medicinal products have many virtues, but processing vegetable raw materials is not easy. “The main problem is the wide variation in the content of biologically active substances in medicinal plants and, as a consequence, in the medicinal products obtained from them, which means there is a risk of not achieving the optimal effect,” says a leading researcher at the metabolic and proteomic analysis laboratory of the Federal Research Institute of Nutrition, Professor, Doctor of Biology Andrei Vasiliev.

There are many factors that can affect the content of biologically active substances: environmental and weather conditions for growing herbs, technologies for raw materials harvesting, processing and storage, etc.

Evalar is one of the few pharmaceutical companies that independently grow raw materials for their products: natural medicines and dietary supplements. In order to provide raw materials for manufacturing, Evalar sows more than 1000 hectares of plantations in the foothills of Altai every year. In almost 25 years of its work, Evalar has built its own seed stock. Cultivating medicinal plants on an industrial scale is a very difficult task. However, quality raw materials are the essential basis for manufacturing quality products.

Evalar is Russia's first fully integrated pharmaceutical production: from growing medicinal herbs and processing them into extracts to packaging finished products. This makes it possible to carry out quality controls at all stages of the manufacturing process. Raw materials and finished products have to pass more than 20 tests, from herbs harvesting on the company’s own plantations to medicinal products packaging. The good manufacturing practice guidelines (GMP standard) provide for strict requirements as to the quality of raw materials and finished products, and therefore, to the manufacturing process flow.

A certain level of temperature and moisture is maintained at the manufacturing plant, three-stage filters are constantly operating. Full air exchange in each room occurs 20 times per hour. All Evalar’s buildings are interconnected by galleries, and the employees can get to any part of the building without leaving the premises, which means that they have no contact with any microbes. Every day, a package with fully sterile new work clothes is issued to every employee.

Evalar’s microbiological laboratory, located in the manufacturing plant and licensed to work with the pathogens and microorganisms of the risk groups 3 and 4, ensures continuous monitoring of the environment: water, compressed air, swabs from the surface of equipment, from walls, from door handles, from the personnel’s hands, and from technological clothing. This is a full-fledged research institute, employing thirty qualified pharmacists and chemists.

The quality of raw materials, formulations and finished products is monitored by the Quality Control Department’s own laboratory. Its modern equipment can assess all the necessary characteristics of the raw materials, confirming their quality and safety.

The authenticity of all the original ingredients is routinely tested, as well as their safety. Every plant must be clean and safe for the health, so it is checked for the absence of microorganisms, heavy metals, radioactivity, etc. The third aspect of raw materials testing is assessing their strength. The effectiveness of the finished products depends on it. The active substances can be identified and quantified, which allows manufacturing products with stable quality that does not vary from batch to batch. The results are automatically calculated, which minimizes potential random error of manual calculations.

Each batch of finished products is checked once more, based on the same scheme: authenticity, safety and efficiency.