Huba Haya

The name comes from The Secret History of the Mongols. Huba Haya (Хуба Хаяа) — Chinggis Khan’s winter quarters on the Tuul River in Tuv province — is also the name on fifty-millilitre bottles of sea buckthorn essence retailing for under three dollars at Nomin supermarkets across Ulaanbaatar. The connection is literal: the processing factory stands on the historic site.

German engineering on sacred ground

Mongolia’s sea buckthorn grows wild across 60,000 hectares of steppe — thorny, cold-resistant, and nutritionally dense. The country harvested 2,215 tons of it in 2022, representing eighty-six percent of its entire fruit and berry output. Yet processing capacity has lagged far behind the resource base.

KhaanJims SBT LLC (Хаан Жимс), the company behind Huba Haya, was registered in 2004 with a mandate to close that gap. The vision was vertical integration — from plantation to packaged product — but the factory would not materialise for twelve years. When it did, in November 2016, German engineering firm NIC LLC had designed the facility: zero-waste eco-technology, mechanical cold-pressing for seed oil, centrifugal separation for pulp, and a processing capacity of one metric ton of fruit per hour.

Four hectares of sea buckthorn plantation surround the factory in Erdene soum (Эрдэнэ сум), supplemented by roughly one hundred hectares across Uvs and Selenge aimags. The on-site cultivation provides quality control over raw materials. The heritage name provides something harder to engineer: a brand identity that connects a modern food processing operation to eight centuries of Mongolian history.

First certified, then exported

On 10 January 2019, SGS Geneva awarded Huba Haya ISO 22000:2005 certification — making it the first sea buckthorn factory in Mongolia, and only the sixth Mongolian food factory of any kind, to meet the international food safety management standard. The certification opened doors that product quality alone could not.

By 2023, KhaanJims appeared in the Mongolia National Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s Exporters E-Catalogue as an established exporter with three branch units, thirty to fifty employees, and active shipments to five countries: Taiwan, Japan, China, South Korea, and Germany. The German connection — NIC LLC’s Axel Welin and Gerhard Gimmler designed the factory — may have facilitated the European beachhead. At Foodex Japan 2019 — Asia’s largest food and beverage trade show — the brand’s “Good Morning” (Өглөөний мэнд) sea buckthorn-and-carrot puree reportedly won a “Best Taste of Asia” award, competing against over three thousand exhibitors.

From puree to pulp oil

The product architecture reflects dual commercial ambitions. Under the Huba Haya consumer brand: 100% pure sea buckthorn essence with no water, sugar, or additives; “Good Morning” puree; and blueberry and cherry product lines. Under sub-brands Dr.drop and Magic drop: cold-processed pulp oil and cold-pressed seed oil targeting cosmetic applications. Under the KhaanJims corporate name: bulk oils in one-litre to twenty-five-litre bag-in-box packaging for B2B buyers.

The dual-channel model — branded consumer products alongside raw material supply — positions Huba Haya as both a competitor to and a potential supplier for Mongolia’s growing natural beauty sector. Downstream cosmetics brands like Lhamour and the Mongolia Cosmetics Cluster members use sea buckthorn as a hero ingredient. No supply relationship with Huba Haya has been documented, but the B2B infrastructure exists.

The global sea buckthorn market, valued at $345–520 million in 2023, is projected to reach $0.9–1.5 billion by 2032. Asia-Pacific holds sixty-seven percent of market share, dominated by China. Mongolia’s competitive advantage lies not in scale but in organic purity and wild provenance — attributes that command premium pricing in Japan, Korea, and European markets where consumers pay for clean-label natural ingredients. Huba Haya’s Alibaba listing indicates supply capacity of 100,000 units per month, suggesting the factory’s production already targets this growing international demand.

Ownership and context

KhaanJims SBT LLC was founded by Norovyn Altankhuyag (Норовын Алтанхуяг), Mongolia’s 27th Prime Minister, who served from 2012 to 2014. A biophysicist from Uvs Province (Увс аймаг) — Mongolia’s sea buckthorn heartland — Altankhuyag registered the company in 2004, more than a decade before the factory opened. He remains a sitting member of parliament, re-elected in 2020 and 2024. Factory operations are managed by director D. Gerelkhuu (Д. Гэрэлхүү).

The political connection introduces complexity. Investigative Mongolian journalism reported that KhaanJims received ₮750 million (approximately $270,000) in interest-free government loans from the Agricultural Development Support Fund during Altankhuyag’s tenure as prime minister — a documented conflict of interest that contributed to his ouster via no-confidence vote in November 2014. The company proceeded with the factory investment regardless, opening the facility two years after the political crisis.

What stands independently of the ownership question is the industrial substance: German-engineered processing, ISO certification by Switzerland’s SGS, five active export markets, and a product range spanning consumer, cosmetic, and bulk supply channels. In a sector where most Mongolian processors remain informal and uncertified, Huba Haya’s credentials speak for themselves.

Last updated: March 15, 2026