Amanprana: success with red palm oil

Bart Maes has done it: from nothing he has created in less than five years a company in Belgium marketing health-promoting oils and fats. He seems to have found a gap in the market, because demand in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium and the Netherlands is growing continuously. As a journalist who also works for the Dutch specialist magazine Bio-Food, he has summarised the benefits of omega 3, 6, and 9 oil, and of coconut and palm oil in a number of publications based on the evaluation of scientific literature.

(Picture: Bart Maes and Chantal Voets)
“31.12.1999 was the last time I went to McDonalds for a meal,” Maes confesses. Up to that date he had never set foot in a wholefood shop in his life. As the new millennium got underway, however, his life changed radically. His daughter suddenly had problems at school and suffered from various medical symptoms like intolerance to cocoa and preservatives and colorants in food. Maes immediately set about researching the literature, worked his way through numerous studies and came to the conclusion that the culprit could be a lack of omega fatty acids. Accompanied by his wife, Chantal Voets, he went to an organic store for the first time, and within a year everything they ate was organic only. “Every day our daughter had a spoonful of omega oil, and after six months her problems were a thing of the past. Changing to another school was not necessary either,” they said, relieved at the progress of their daughter, who is now 16 years old.
(Picture on left: Okinawa oil: “The body synthesises up to 30 more fatty acids from the two essential fatty acids omega 3 and 6,” says Maes)

The subsequent ‘market study’ of products rich in omega fatty acids was sobering. Wheat germ oil, for example, was available but it was not a product that combined the various characteristics that Maes wanted. So the 47 year-old Belgian, who in 2000 had sold his shares in a heating stove company, decided on a positive change of direction. ”We thought about creating a product that contained a high level of omega fatty acids plus carotin and vitamin E to protect against free radicals..” That’s the point reached in 2001. Maes got lots of information from the 600 page book by Udo Erasmus “Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill”, that deals in detail with the role played by omega fatty acids. From now on, their guiding principle was the saying attributed to Hippocrates: “Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food.”

Bart Maes and Chantal Voet’s new company Noble House was launched in 2004 selling coconut oil and omega 3,6 and 9 oil. As far as possible, all their products had to be natural, cold pressed (under 40° C), completely unadulterated and to come from organic cultivation. Applying this principle, a red palm oil – pressed red palm fruits in their natural form – and a natural coconut oil were produced. They also now sell a combined product containing coconut, palm oil and olive oil. “The oil palm is the only plant that contains high levels of carotin and vitamin E,” Maes explains. The red palm oil does not come from areas where the rainforest is being cut down but from sources recognised by the US American NOP Programme, and is certificated by the environmental organisations Rain Forest Alliance and Proforest. The fruit is produced by a farmers’ cooperative in Columbia and is certified by Ecocert. “The red palm oil is 100 % traceable from the jar back to its cultivation by the farmers,” says Maes. (Picture: Red palm oil by Amanprana)

But the first steps are always a challenge. Bart Maes filled the first bottles in his kitchen and in the garage. “In those days I went from shop to shop in the Netherlands and organised tasting sessions,” he reminisces. And then finally the first wholesaler, Mannavita in Belgium, was prepared to include his products in their stock range. “Over night we had access to 500 wholefood and health food shops in Belgium.” This made things much easier as other wholesalers in the Netherlands (Terra Sana) and Germany (Pural) and most regional wholesalers followed suit “because they could see there was strong demand for our products”. (Picture: Plantation in Columbia)

A lot more products have come onto the market in recent years, and at the moment coconut flour that was launched in 2007 seems to be the top seller. It is in fact a by-product of coconut oil production and was hardly ever used for human consumption. But now a new career path has been discovered for the fine white, sweet flour. “It has a dietetic effect, because its high fibre content can stop diarrhoea, or if it is taken in with a lot of liquid it can get rid of constipation.” Coconut flour is also good for people with gluten intolerance, or quite simply because it smells nice.

“Wherever we can, we use glass and not plastic for our packaging,” Chantal Voets says. And elsewhere in the business ecological materials and recycling are taken seriously too. They use recycled paper and cardboard, plant-based inks and degradable labels. At work the employees wear, of course, clothing made from natural textiles and only eco-cleaning materials are used in the washrooms. Eco-paints have been used on the walls, and the furniture is made of solid wood.

The brand name Amanprana comes from the ancient Indian language Sanskrit and means “peaceful” and “energy”. As a symbol of power and strength Bart Maes has chosen a large elephant with its young. “I know elephants are vegetarian, but they are very strong,” he explains. Moreover, in Flemish the words for oil and elephant are very close: olie and olifant. “Noble House” was taken from the book by James Clavell on the Borobudur Temple, the most visited Buddhist shrine in Indonesia.

For Bart Maes it is not only the careful processing of fats and oils that is important. He wants to go further and create transparency for the consumer. An example is walnut oil that carries precise information about the producer in French Périgord, who does not use what is left over from producing walnuts for eating. Instead of adopting the usual practice, he processes whole nuts of the best quality to obtain the oil that he supplies to Noble House. His Rioja olive oil from Spain is another example. In the case of processing coconut oil in Sri Lanka, Bart Maes is a co-owner of the business, because he wants the best possible quality control. “The coconuts come from a small farmer who operates in the vicinity of the oil press – in other words, not from areas where the forest has been cleared to make way for coconut plantations,” he explains. He also points out that the farmers are paid more than the average for that region, although the price they receive cannot exceed a legally fixed maximum – a measure designed to prevent all the farmers simply supplying the Fair Trade producers. However, there is nothing to stop companies supporting social facilities like kindergartens, hospitals and schools.

The number of employees at the production plant in Schoten near Antwerp has increased considerably thanks to vibrant sales in the last two years (picture). There are also a few more staff who travel round six countries organising tasting sessions in specialist wholefood shops. Amanprana products are sold in a total of eleven countries, and it is more than likely that new countries will be added to the list in the next few years.



Tip:

Why omega 3-6-9?
Why coconut oil and red palm oil?
Serene vitality

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www.noble-house.tk