Repha

Repha is a German maker of herbal medicines, founded in Hannover in 1925 by Friedrich Bradtmöller and still run by his family four generations later [3][7]. Registered as Repha GmbH Biologische Arzneimittel, the company is based in Langenhagen in the Hannover region of Lower Saxony [6]. Its business centres on plant-based medicines and food supplements for three areas of the body: the airways, the urinary tract and the digestive system.

Repha is not a cosmetics company. Its best-known products are pharmacy medicines such as ANGOCIN® Anti-Infekt N, made from nasturtium and horseradish, and the gut remedy MYRRHINIL-INTEST®. Its connection to personal care is limited to a pair of topical items, a balm for irritated skin and a vein, sports and massage cream. What sets the company apart in its own telling is a long bet on clinical research: Repha describes its approach as "evidence-based phytotherapy", meaning traditional herbal medicine tested with modern scientific methods. The company marked its 100th anniversary in October 2025 and remains active.

The company's founding story, as Repha tells it, is one of a man leaving a safe job. Friedrich Bradtmöller worked at the large industrial company Continental before giving up what the company calls his "old, secure life" to start a business devoted to his passion, herbal medicine [2]. He founded Repha in Hannover on 16 October 1925.

The founder's son, Fritz Bradtmöller, joined him in developing the products that would define the company. According to Repha, its main medicines, ANGOCIN® Anti-Infekt N and MYRRHINIL-INTEST®, were developed in-house by father and son in the 1950s, working with physicians, naturopaths and pharmacists they were friends with. The company says both medicines still contain the same medicinal plants they were first made with more than 60 years ago.

The founder's personal motto, according to the company, was "every working day should be a Sunday". Repha describes this as lived company culture rather than a slogan. From the 1950s to the 1970s, staff outings and social gatherings were a regular feature, and Fritz Bradtmöller is remembered for playing the accordion for employees on request.

Repha's two signature medicines arrived in consecutive years. ANGOCIN® Anti-Infekt N, a herbal remedy intended to help the body fight infections, launched in 1958. MYRRHINIL-INTEST®, a gastrointestinal medicine, followed in 1959.

A turning point came around the year 2000. Repha describes this period as a second moment that called for the founder's kind of courage. Until then, the company's medicines had rested largely on experience passed down through decades of use. The managing directors at the time, Jürgen Bradtmöller of the third generation and Dr. Karl-Heinz Goos, who had led the scientific side since 1988, decided to make systematic scientific study of the company's medicines a permanent part of how it worked. According to Repha, the investment was a serious risk for a company of its size, and it was made possible only through personal guarantees from Jürgen Bradtmöller [2]. The company later called the result its "scientific rebirth".

One early outcome was a 2000 study by Conrad and Frank, which used antibiograms (laboratory tests of how bacteria respond to a substance) to examine the mustard oils found in nasturtium and horseradish. Repha presents the work as clear evidence that these compounds act as a plant-based antibiotic with clinical relevance.

The fourth generation entered the business in 2003, when Björn Bradtmöller, the founder's great-grandson, joined the company [7]. Two years later Repha broadened its range with NORTASE®, a plant-derived enzyme product for people whose pancreas does not produce enough digestive enzymes.

The following decade brought outside recognition for the plants behind Repha's products. Nasturtium, one of the two plants in ANGOCIN®, was named Medicinal Plant of the Year in 2013. Myrrh received the same title in 2021, and horseradish was named Healing Plant of the Year in the same year.

In 2015 the company expanded its logistics and sales operations at its Langenhagen headquarters. A research partnership with Ulm University followed in 2016, which Repha counts as its twelfth partner university.

Recognition in German medical guidelines came next. In 2017 ANGOCIN® Anti-Infekt N was recommended in the German S3 guideline for recurrent urinary tract infections, and in 2018 MYRRHINIL-INTEST® was recommended in the S3 guideline for ulcerative colitis [3].

Repha also extended its reach into Austria through a distribution partnership with Sanova Pharma GesmbH. The arrangement began with MYRRHINIL-INTEST® in 2021 and was extended to ANGOCIN® in 2022 [3]. In 2022 the company also launched ALLUNA® Schlaf, a herbal sleep medicine.

Construction of a new laboratory and office building officially began in 2024. On 16 October 2025, exactly a century after its founding, Björn Bradtmöller celebrated the company's 100th anniversary with the entire workforce. Marking the occasion, he said he wished he could walk his great-grandfather through the company's nasturtium fields, its new offices and its modern laboratory and logistics centre.

Repha is independent and owner-managed. It describes itself as a family company run in the fourth generation by Björn Bradtmöller, a pharmacist and managing partner, together with two authorised officers, the pharmacist Ole Goos and the businessman Michael Köller [2]. According to Repha, the fathers of both officers had also helped shape the company, from the 1980s and 2000s respectively.

No acquisitions or changes of ownership are documented. Repha stresses that it is guided by conviction and moral principles rather than share prices.

Repha's tagline is "Repha. Wissen, was natürlich wirkt", which translates roughly as "Knowing what works naturally". The company's stated mission is to offer people safe and effective natural alternatives to chemically synthesised drugs. Its vision, in its own words, is to combine the healing power of nature with the precision of modern research to improve people's quality of life.

The company frames its identity around three pillars: research and development, strong and sustainable growth, and human values rooted in independent family ownership. Repha presents itself as a successful German Mittelstand company, the German term for an established mid-sized company.

On growth, Repha reports that its revenue has risen by more than 1,000 percent since 1990 and that its workforce has tripled [1]. It does not publish absolute figures.

Repha's current range covers the airways, pancreas, urinary tract, stomach and gut, liver, immune system, mouth and throat, thyroid and sleep. It mixes licensed herbal medicines with food supplements and a homeopathic headache remedy, REPHALGIN® N.

ANGOCIN® Anti-Infekt N is the company's flagship. It combines nasturtium and horseradish and is used for bladder infections and colds. Repha calls it its most important medicine and says it has run more than 25 studies on it over the past 20 years [4]. The company reports that large studies from 2005 found ANGOCIN® to have comparable effectiveness in bronchitis, sinusitis and urinary tract infections, with markedly fewer side effects. It also says later research showed that the mustard oils in the two plants can block bacteria from building biofilms, the protective layers they form, and from using quorum sensing, a chemical signalling system bacteria use to coordinate. A study with University Hospital Bonn, according to Repha, found that ANGOCIN® reduced how often urinary tract infections occurred in paraplegic patients who rely on catheters.

MYRRHINIL-INTEST® is a three-ingredient gut medicine made from myrrh, coffee charcoal and dry chamomile flower extract. Working with scientists at the Charité in Berlin, Repha says it showed how the combination strengthens the "tight junctions" that seal the gut lining. The company adds that it confirmed this effect directly in the human gut using confocal laser endomicroscopy, a technique that magnifies tissue more than a thousandfold.

NORTASE® offers a vegetarian alternative to pancreatin, the standard enzyme treatment, which is made from pig pancreas. Repha's product instead uses enzymes produced biotechnologically from Japanese rice fungi. The company says these enzymes are stable in stomach acid and begin working in the stomach, which it presents as useful for patients whose pancreatin treatment does not work well enough or who prefer not to take animal products. Repha states that it is the only supplier in the world of medicines made with these fungal enzymes [4].

Other products include ALLUNA® Schlaf, made with valerian and hops; MARRUBIN®, bronchial drops based on white horehound; the REPHA-OS® mouth spray; and supplements such as HEPAROM® Leberkomplex, BILISAN® Leberkomplex and the iodine product KROPHAN® Jodkomplex.

Two products sit closest to personal care. REPHADERM® is a protective, caring balm for irritated skin, and REPHASTASAN® is a cream for veins, sports and massage.

Research is central to how Repha describes itself. The company says it invests a large share of its annual revenue in studying its medicines, with the aim of confirming their traditional effectiveness and safety through studies that meet current scientific standards. According to Repha, it has carried out more than 60 research projects in the past 15 years alone, and more than 80 studies overall [1].

Clinical studies and basic research take place at German universities and hospitals under the direction of professors. Repha names Kliniken Essen-Mitte, the universities of Freiburg, Leipzig, Heidelberg and Giessen, and the Charité in Berlin among its research partners. Work at these sites focuses mainly on ANGOCIN® Anti-Infekt N and MYRRHINIL-INTEST®. The company also runs large multi-centre studies with medical practices across Germany, in which doctors track how the medicines perform in everyday use with real patients. As a matter of principle, Repha says its research is conducted in Europe and preferably in Germany.

Repha describes care for natural resources as part of its identity. A rooftop solar installation with a capacity of 114.5 kilowatts peak has, according to the company, produced about 270,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity so far, saving roughly 65 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year [1]. Repha says it uses 70 percent of this solar power itself, and that all its new buildings run on air-source heat pumps.

The company states that its production takes place entirely in Germany with long-standing partners close by, which keeps supply chains short. Nasturtium is grown entirely in Germany and Austria, and Repha supports partnerships and development projects for ingredients sourced from Africa, such as myrrh from Ethiopia.

Repha is active. It celebrated its centenary on 16 October 2025 and has had a new laboratory and office building under construction since 2024. Product information on its website was updated as recently as May 2026, and the company says it has new preparations for new areas of use in development. Its documented markets are Germany and Austria, where it works with a distribution partner. Björn Bradtmöller leads the business, and he has said his aim is to run Repha in the family tradition while developing its herbal medicines further, so as to secure lasting growth for future generations.