Qinghai Lake Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.

The company was established in 1987 and specialises in licorice. Its head office is in Xining, Qinghai Province, and its Chinese production base is at Yibuqia Town in Hainan Prefecture, Qinghai, with a second plant at Nukus in Uzbekistan.

Work covers research, extraction and separation of licorice active constituents. The output is grouped as licorice food additives, licorice flavours and fragrances, and licorice raw materials for personal care, with pharmaceutical and tobacco grades alongside. Products in the sweetener and extract range include glycyrrhizin, licorice extract, ammonium glycyrrhizinate, disodium and trisodium glycyrrhizinate, and monopotassium and tripotassium glycyrrhizinate. The catalogue now runs to more than forty licorice products, covered by sixteen granted Chinese patents.

In 2014 the company set up a dedicated licorice research institute in Qingdao on a Chinese Academy of Sciences platform, and from 2016, with support from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Qinghai provincial government, it has planted more than 30,000 mu of licorice in Qinghai and elsewhere to secure its own raw material.

The company holds Chinese GMP certification and a CEP certificate from the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines, and is accredited by Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare as a foreign drug manufacturer. Further certifications cover ISO 9001, ISO 22000, FSSC 22000, ISO 27001, ISO 45001, ISO 14001 and HACCP, Sedex and CyberVadis assessments, Halal and Kosher, COSMOS organic certification on several products and European REACH registration. Sales and R&D offices operate in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Qingdao, Chengdu and Zhengzhou.