The first plant
India's first sea buckthorn processing facility, established at Leh in 2005 and still in operation. It opened an export trade to the United States and gave the harvest a buyer for the first time.
Pioneering Work
Building an industry from a wild berry
Sea buckthorn grows wild across the Ladakh cold desert at altitudes where little else fruits. Turning that harvest into a manufacturing base meant building every part of the chain — the plant, the process, the training, and the products themselves.
Sea buckthorn grows wild along the rivers of the Ladakh cold desert, between roughly 9,000 and 14,000 feet.
A patented process
Only the second person worldwide to file for a process innovation patent on the manufacture of sea buckthorn juices — developed through his own research, with further applications in progress.
Fifty world firsts
More than fifty products that had never been made anywhere: sea buckthorn chyawanprash, lipsticks, toothpaste, teas, nutrition bars, cosmetics, supercritical CO₂ oil extracts and household ranges — over 180 products in all, exported to the United States, the United Kingdom and the UAE.
Organised at the source
Collection organised through government-recognised co-operative societies from 2005, when Leh still ran on army generators for a few hours a day. Training every year since for some 1,500 farmers and 150 processing workers, at a fair price and on harvest methods that do not damage the shrub.
Harvest and processing training has run every year in Leh, Shey and the Nubra valley since 2005.
We research and make what others cannot even imagine.
Arjun Khanna