We, at Natures Aid, are committed to providing our customers with products of the highest quality therefore we will never compromise on our high standards of quality, efficacy and safety in products, services and the environment in which we work.
We ensure that every product we sell is fit for its intended use and in the packaging used it will maintain its quality until the end of its ‘best before’ date and is free from physical, chemical and biological contamination. We ensure it contains the correct ingredients, in the correct proportions and always meets the label claim and once the product is taken it disintegrates and is absorbed by the body effectively.
Quality control and quality assurance cover all processes and procedures to guarantee high quality. We at Natures Aid have always worked to the principles of GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) and to all the legal requirements of the Food industry and the Pharmaceutical industry. All staff have intensive training in GMP, Hygiene and Health & Safety to ensure that quality is ‘built in’ to every product. We carry out regular quality audits both internally and externally- ensuring that quality is maintained.
We impose stringent quality control and quality assurance procedures from delivery into our factory where everything is fully checked and identified by QC before being released for manufacture. We check the quality throughout every stage of the manufacturing and packaging process until the finished product is thoroughly checked and finally passed and released for sale.
We use standardised Herbal extracts wherever possible to ensure consistent potency so that consumers can be confident that every tablet will deliver the same amount of the active ingredient. The potency and purity of our raw materials are always the highest available and are sourced to specific quality standards. We work hard to ensure raw materials and finished products conform to the requirements of the European Pharmacopoeia and the BHP (British Herbal Pharmacopoeia) and reject outright any raw materials that do not meet this criteria.
We use several techniques for analysing and testing raw materials and finished products in our own laboratory, headed by our full time technical support manager.
A lot of tests we carry out are based upon ‘scientific fingerprint techniques’. These identify active ingredients. Every compound has a unique pattern (fingerprint) when analysed and by using these methods we can identify what each compound is and whether herbal compounds are from the root or leaf and ensure that it is pure and free from contaminants by checking its ‘fingerprint’. One of these methods is FTIR (Infra-red spectroscopy) used to confirm the identities of single compounds e.g. vitamins and some soft gel capsules by plotting the molecular fingerprint.
We also use TLC (Thin Layer Chromatography) which is used to identify herbs and herbal extracts by separating out individual compounds in the sample and producing characteristic patterns which are compared with reference materials. Any contaminants in materials would then be shown and the material would be immediately rejected. TLC can also be used to confirm the purity of single materials such as vitamins.
In addition we use HPLC (High Performance Liquid Chromatography) This is mainly used to measure the strength of vitamins, herbs and other natural products in both raw materials and finished products. It is also used to check for purity.
Various traditional methods of chemical analysis are also used to test raw materials and active ingredients in tablets.
Finally, disintegration, hardness and friability tests are carried out to ensure that the tablets will disintegrate in the body when taken, yet will stand up to packaging and transportation nationwide.
The result of our commitment to quality is that whenever you see the Natures Aid name on a product you can be confident that the product meets the label claim and that it has been made from the finest ingredients to a consistently high standard.