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Vita Green formulates its business strategy as carefully as it does its popular health supplements: combining the finest Chinese medicinal ingredients with the highest levels of scientific rigour
A household name in the city and one of its most trusted brands, medical supplement maker Vita Green is a quintessential Hong Kong company, blending the best of east and west: the ancient wisdom of Chinese medicine with the rigorous standards of western science. Its approach involves extracting the active ingredients from traditional Chinese medicinal ingredients and turning them into western-style nutraceutical products.
The company was established by its CEO, doctor Helen Chan, in 1993. Her son Ryan Tse, a director of company, has worked for Vita Green since 2010.
“Both of my parents started off as western doctors in Hong Kong,” Tse says. “Never did they imagine they would start a company. They were quite successful as doctors—my dad was a cardiologist and my mum was a paediatrician—so they didn’t have time to do other things.
“But 20 years into their practice, they felt that the modern medical system was broken, because you can only go to the doctor when you’re sick; imagine if your body were a car, and you could only go to the mechanic if you crashed your car. So they started to study Chinese medicine, because its focus is more preventive, rather than fixing you when you’re broken. Preventive is always the best form of medicine.”
Pioneering support
These days, Vita Green employs well over 1,000 staff, and has more than 60 outlets in Hong Kong and Macau, as well as six overseas offices. The company makes more than 150 products, but one of its first, Vita Green Lingzhi, remains its most popular.
All products sold both in Hong Kong and overseas are made in the city, mostly at a factory in the InnoPark, Tai Po, managed by Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP), which was established in 2014.
HKSTP, says Tse, is “very, very supportive of Hong Kong companies that actually try to change things—pioneers. The government these past 10 years has been very supportive of new initiatives, and the Science Park has been a big part of that, whatever we ask of them. I think we need more people in Hong Kong doing R&D and innovation, and the Science Park is the best incubator for this group of people.”
Fusing science with Chinese medicine
Before they arrive in Hong Kong, Vita Green’s herbal ingredients are gathered in mainland China and then processed at Vita Green’s managed site in Guangxi province. When the company bought the factory in the 1990s, says Tse, it had a far less healthy role: making alcohol. So obscurely located was it in those days, he adds, that it had no phone and took his family three days to reach from Hong Kong.
Vita Green’s factories are Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) certified, meaning they have to adhere to extremely stringent standards, from installing air-conditioning systems that maintain constant air temperature, humidity and purity to taking extreme measures to keep them free from dust, bacteria and contamination. Vita Green employs a team of leading scientists to oversee its work; its R&D head is Ng Tzi Bun, who is also an adjunct professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
For Tse, providing products that people trust is reward in itself. “My mum always says: every single time someone takes our supplements, they get a little healthier; they wouldn’t come back if they didn’t,” he says.
“We just try to be little doctors. We are trying to give people another tool; we want to give the power of having health back to the individual.”
For more from HKSTP see the Made in Hong Kong content hub here.