About

Aqre Group: Leading Producer of Natural Ingredients

Aqre Group is a leading producer of natural ingredients for the pharmaceutical, cosmetics, food and beverage industries. With Bionexx, we produce our flagship product Artemisinin in our facility in Fianarantsoa, Madagascar. With Qimpexx, we produce Quinine -a natural ingredient indispensable for the beverage industry- while setting up integrated value chains that benefit local communities.

Our ambition is to expand our operations with 4 integrated value chains by 2025 – value chains that will enable us to actively explore more regenerative landscape opportunities together with our smallholder farming communities.

Opportunities focused primarily on improving soil health and ecosystem biodiversity through agroforestry and increasing the incomes of smallholder farmers and their families.

Artemisinin: Aqre’s First Integrated Value Chain

Bionexx is the only company in Africa today that can produce Artemisinin on an industrial scale. With a 10% share of the global market, we are one of the worldwide leaders. Artemisinin cultivation and production. Currently, the lion’s share of our products is exported to India, the current centre of global ACT manufacturing. However, the COVID-19 pandemic saw a sharp rise in international interest in Artemisinin, not only as a key ingredient for ACTs but also as a potential base ingredient for natural medicines against diseases like cancer.

Artemisinin is the key base ingredient for the anti-malarial drug Artemisinin Combined Treatment, or ACT, a first line malaria treatment approved by the World Health Organization (WHO). Artemisinin is extracted from the leaves of Artemisia Annua, grown and cultivated by a network of more than 15,000 Malagasy smallholder farmers across 5,000 hectares of land. The leaves are then transported to our production facility where the Artemisinin is extracted and purified for commercial use.

Leading producer of Quinine: for the benefit of local communities

The Future of Artemisinin Production

It is our ambition to become the first fully integrated manufacturer of ACTs in Africa for Africans. In the next years we plan to break ground on a new facility capable of converting Artemisinin into Artemether, one of the two Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) in ACTs. When realized we plan to build a new ACT production facility will make us the world’s first company that services the entire ACT value chain from crop to pill.

By 2025, we believe we will be able produce more than 50 million cases that cure malaria, improve the livelihoods of 50,000 smallholder farmers and restore 20,000 hectares of degraded land.

The global supply chain for ACTs currently follows one of three paths.

1. Artemisinin sourced in China -> ACT produced in India -> end customer

2. Artemisinin sourced in China -> ACT produced in India and/or Italy -> end customer

3. Artemisinin sourced in Madagascar -> ACT produced in China, Turkey and/or Switzerland -> end customer

Aqre Group envisions a fairer and more regenerative value chain that directly connects end customers to ACT that is locally and fairly sourced and produced in Madagascar.

4. Artemisinin sourced in Madagascar -> ACT produced in Madagascar -> end customer