(Yicai Global) July 19 -- Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Holdings said it inked a CNY1.3 billion (USD180 million) deal to import materials used in traditional Chinese medicine from Russia and Indonesia after local prices jumped.

Guangzhou Pharma will buy nearly 20,000 tons of herbs, including licorice, astragalus, divaricate saposhnikovia root, and schisandra, from Russia’s Newland over five years and almost 10,000 tons of frangipani from Indonesia’s Xintiandi Native Products Trading, the Guangzhou-based firm said on July 18.

In the future, the company will continue to look closely into the production and supply of foreign sources of Chinese medicinal ingredients and open up such domestic and foreign markets, Guangzhou Pharma noted.

The parties will cultivate, plant, breed, produce, and process key healing and rare animal medicinal materials, the firm added. They will also establish a joint research and development platform for TCM and research key core technologies for the standardization of seeds, it pointed out.

China’s TCM exports rose 14 percent to USD5.7 billion last year, data from the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Medicines and Health Products showed. Imports rose 5.1 percent to USD2.9 billion.

The top 10 imported herbs used in TCM include American ginseng, deer antler velvet, ginseng, turmeric, and crocus, accounting for 36 percent of the total value of the imported materials. The top 10 source countries include Indonesia, Myanmar, Canada, and New Zealand, accounting for 85 percent of the total brought into China and 87 percent of their value.

Editor: Martin Kadiev