Echinacea Capsules

This is a finished, dosed capsule rather than a bulk extract. Thovek supplies the neat Echinacea extract as a separate line, and the two are genuinely different articles with different specifications, different classification and different buyers, so they are written up separately. The default fill here is an extract of the aerial parts of Echinacea purpurea (L.) Moench, family Asteraceae, standardised to 4% total polyphenols by UV, with a 2% chicoric acid grade by HPLC where a chromatographic marker is wanted. The house reference build is a size 0 shell at a 400 mg fill with no excipient beyond a flow aid. Root (radix) material, Echinacea angustifolia DC. and Echinacea pallida (Nutt.) Nutt. builds, native 4:1 and 10:1 ratio extracts and alkylamide-standardised grades are all made to a buyer's brief, and the species, plant part, marker and analytical method are printed on every certificate of analysis rather than left to the word 'Echinacea' on a label. Echinacea is the textbook case of a marker that means nothing until you have named the species, and buyers get caught by it constantly. Chicoric acid and caftaric acid are the caffeic acid derivatives of Echinacea purpurea; echinacoside is the marker of Echinacea angustifolia and Echinacea pallida and is effectively absent from E. purpurea. A specification offering '4% echinacosides' on material labelled Echinacea purpurea is therefore describing something that cannot exist — either the species is not what the label says, or the assay is being carried by something that was put there. That second possibility is live rather than theoretical: the Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program's 2025 bulletin on Echinacea reports E. angustifolia extracts adulterated with Cistanche, which is rich in echinacoside and lifts precisely the number the buyer is paying for, while the older and better-documented substitution swapped Parthenium integrifolium root — a same-family look-alike — for Echinacea root through much of the twentieth century. The European monographs give the honest reference points: not less than 0.5% of the sum of caftaric and cichoric acid in E. purpurea root, not less than 0.5% echinacoside in E. angustifolia root, and not less than 0.2% echinacoside in E. pallida root, all on the dried drug. Every lot is screened by HPTLC and HPLC against both adulterants and reported against the monograph figure for the species actually shipped. The shell and the paperwork are the rest of the job. HPMC is the default, which keeps the capsule vegan and free of every declarable allergen; bovine or porcine gelatin is available with the origin stated in writing, and no shell we supply contains titanium dioxide, since E171 came off the EU permitted food additive list in 2022 and has no place in an export SKU. Echinacea belongs to the Asteraceae (Compositae) and the family is declared on the specification, because some buyers carry a Compositae statement in their own labelling. One market question is worth settling before you order: Echinacea is a registered traditional herbal medicinal product in several EU member states under Directive 2001/83/EC while it is an ordinary dietary supplement ingredient in the United States, and that difference changes your registration route, your permitted label wording and, as set out in the classification note, potentially your tariff heading. Tell us the destination and the intended regulatory status at enquiry and the dossier gets built to match.