There are roughly 1.8 billion Muslim consumers in the world, and a good number of them read a supplement label more carefully than the average shopper does. The capsule shell, the gelatin, the glycerin, the solvent an extract was pulled with: all of it matters. Here is how those choices get made in our own products, and what we can and cannot claim about them.
Why halal matters even outside Muslim-majority markets
The obvious markets: GCC countries (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait), Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, Egypt. Less obvious: large halal-aware consumer segments in Germany (~5.5M Muslims), France (~5.7M), the U.K. (~3.9M), the U.S. (~3.5M), and a meaningful share of Indian and Singaporean consumers who actively look for halal-compatible options.
The supplement aisle in any of those markets looks the same. Most premium brands carry no halal indication at all, so the shopper who cares is left decoding an excipient list on the back of a box. We formulate so that list holds up to the reading. PharmScale received recognition from the BiH Agency for Halal Quality Certification at the Halal Quality Congress 2023. That is recognition, and it is not the same thing as a certificate. We are careful about the difference, and the rest of this article explains it.
What “halal” actually requires for supplements
There are three layers to it for a nutra product.
1. Permissible ingredients
No pork-derived gelatin, which rules out most standard hard capsules unless they are swapped for vegetable cellulose (HPMC) shells or gelatin from halal-slaughtered fish or cattle. No alcohol-extracted herbal actives unless the alcohol is fully removed. No bovine collagen unless the cattle were halal-slaughtered. Insect-derived ingredients such as carmine and shellac need case-by-case review.
We use HPMC shells across our capsule products, and we do not use porcine-derived excipients or alcohol carriers in any of them.
2. Manufacturing line separation
A halal product must not pick up non-halal material during production. In our facility that means dedicated cleaning protocols between products, documented changeover procedures, and production runs scheduled so that incompatible materials never follow each other through the same equipment without a validated clean in between.
3. Documented chain of custody
Every raw material’s status has to be documented from the supplier through to the finished product. We hold supplier declarations and full specifications for every material we buy, and every batch traces back to them. That file is what a certifying body audits when a product is submitted.
How halal certification actually works
Step 1: Facility certification
The facility has to be audited and certified by an accredited halal body before any product made on its lines can be certified. We have not put our facility through that audit, and we do not hold a halal certificate.
What our facility does hold is ISO 22000:2018 (Reg. 1515426366) and ISO 22716 GMP (Reg. 1528626076), both issued by TÜV Thüringen under DAkkS accreditation and valid until 23 March 2029, plus U.S. FDA facility registration No. 14287957814 and a BiH Ministry of Health permit. Those cover food safety, cosmetics GMP and regulatory registration. None of them is a halal certificate and we do not present them as one.
Step 2: Product-specific certification
Each finished product is certified individually. The certifying body reviews the full ingredient list, the manufacturing process and CoA samples. Typically four to six weeks per product.
Step 3: Periodic re-audit
Certification is renewed annually. The body re-audits the facility and reviews any change made to the product since the last visit.
We formulate to that standard now, which means that if and when we take a product through certification, it should be a documentation exercise rather than a reformulation.
The four certification bodies that matter
- BiH Agency for Halal Quality Certification, recognised across the EU, GCC and Turkey. This is the body that recognised PharmScale at the Halal Quality Congress 2023.
- JAKIM (Malaysia), the most demanding standard globally. Required for Malaysia and accepted across many GCC markets.
- MUI (Indonesia), required for Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country.
- HFCE / HQC (various European bodies), aimed at the European Muslim consumer market.
Several certifications can run in parallel on the same product. Which ones are worth pursuing depends entirely on where a product is sold, and that is a call we make product by product for our own range.
How we apply this to our own products
- We decide before we formulate. Trying to certify a finished formula almost always ends in reformulating it, so the excipient decisions get made at the start rather than argued about later.
- HPMC capsule shells as standard. Beyond the halal question, HPMC is vegan, vegetarian-friendly and kosher, so one shell decision serves four audiences. It also behaves better than gelatin over a long shelf life: it does not cross-link with trace aldehydes the way gelatin does, which is a common cause of dissolution failures in aged product.
- No halal mark on our labels. We do not print a halal symbol, because we do not hold a halal certificate. A mark we have not earned would be worse than no mark at all.
- We keep the documentation. Supplier declarations, excipient specifications and batch records are on file. A retailer or a customer asking what is in a specific capsule gets a straight answer about that ingredient, which is more useful than a logo anyway.
Where this is going
The global halal pharmaceutical and supplement market is projected to grow at roughly 12% a year through 2030, several times faster than the general supplement market. That is part of why we make the excipient choices we make, well ahead of any certificate. If we do certify a product, it will appear on our certifications page with the issuing body, the registration number and the expiry date, exactly like every other certificate we hold. Until then, what we have is a set of practices and the paperwork behind them.