About — VAN · Vital Agri Nutrients

2009Research farm founded, a year before the company. Trials have run on that ground every season since.

17 yearsOf trial data behind every formulation — read against Punjab’s own 770,000-sample soil survey.

~50,000 tMade on one plant site a year — granular, coated, liquid and biological, across shifts.

22 licencesAgainst 8 Pakistan Standards. Every number published, product by product.

LAB 336PNAC-accredited since 2024. Every lot tested before it ships; every certificate on request.

23 brandsThrough 6 distributors — plus Vital Green, carrying nutrition direct to 10,000+ farmers.

It starts on that research farm and ends at the gate: what a trial shows sets the formulation, what the formulation becomes is made or grown on the same site, tested in the laboratory before it ships, and registered against a Pakistan Standard before it is sold. Most of what leaves carries somebody else’s name — VAN is primarily a business-to-business manufacturer, for more than a dozen national and multinational clients — and Vital Green, founded in 2018, carries the rest direct to more than 10,000 farmers.

Where this started

Crop nutrition was sold by the bag. A crop does not eat by the bag.

Before VAN existed, nutrition was sold as one bag of this, three bags of that — the same prescription for a cotton grower on light soil and a rice grower on a heavy alkaline field in the next district. VAN’s founders did not read that in a report; they watched it, season after season.

In 2007, VAN’s founder produced humic acid in Pakistan from Pakistani leonardite — the oxidised lignite humic substances are drawn from — a material until then imported and, as far as VAN knows, not made here before. What followed built the rest: more chemistries were tried, then tested on ground VAN came to own. That research farm is what the company was built on.

Board of directors

The people who answer for VAN.

Imtiaz Anjum ChaudharyChairmanWith VAN since the beginning

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Imtiaz Sahib put in the seed capital when VAN was an experimental station and an argument — before there was a product, a plant or a customer to point at.

Seventeen years later he is still here, and the company has stayed on that path.

A retired civil servant, professionally trained in tax and finance, with a career spent in tax administration, finance and administration.

Ahmed UmairFounder & Chief Executive Officer

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Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Vital Agri Nutrients and Vital Green, and the person who has led the company for fifteen years.

He chose a hard part of the economy to build in — fragmented, unevenly regulated, chronically short of working capital — and built inside those constraints rather than waiting for them to ease.

Serves as Prime Minister’s Coordinator on Agriculture and as Chairman of the National Agri-trade and Food Safety Authority (NAFSA); also an Independent Director at the National Credit Guarantee Company Limited, a Director of PAMRA, and Adjunct Faculty at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

Currently on sabbatical from the company while serving in federal government.

Faisal DawoodDirectorVice Chairman, Descon

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Vice Chairman of Descon, where he leads the Power and Chemicals businesses and manages the group’s diversification portfolio.

Sits on the boards of several Descon companies and of Descon Technical Institute, and on the Board of the National Management Foundation at LUMS.

BSc in Materials Science and Engineering, Cornell University; MBA, Columbia University.

Dr Ahmed ShoaibDirectorProduct vision & R&D philosophy

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A medical doctor, with fifteen years working in the United Kingdom.

His part here has been larger than a board seat: he shapes the product vision and the R&D philosophy — that soil, food and human health sit on one chain, which places crop nutrition further upstream than the fertilizer industry usually places itself.

That reading is why fortifying the crop through its nutrition, not only raising the tonnage it yields, shapes what VAN develops.

Barrister Ahmed UzairDirectorLegal, compliance & contracting

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The legal, compliance and contracting side of VAN is his work — the agreements, boundaries and protections that let VAN manufacture under somebody else’s brand without either side being exposed, across counterparties from national buyers to multinationals.

Barrister of Lincoln’s Inn and a Partner at AUC | Law since 2012, where he heads the firm’s corporate practice in technology and investment law.

Appointed by the Government of Pakistan to advise development finance institutions on a private equity and venture capital fund; has advised the SECP on Companies Act 2017 reform, and the Government of Punjab on the Lahore Smart City project.

The evidence

More went on. Less came back.

Between 1999-2000 and 2023-24 Pakistan raised the nutrient it applies per hectare by more than two-thirds. Wheat yield rose by under half that. Every kilogram now returns less than it did at the turn of the century — which is an argument about balance and timing, not about applying more.

How the third line is calculated, and its limit. Yield per kilogram of nutrient is a yield index divided by a nutrient-per-hectare index, 2000 = 100. It sets an all-crop nutrient denominator against a crop-specific yield, so it assumes the split of nutrient between crops has not shifted dramatically. It is a partial factor productivity indicator, not a nutrient balance. The direction is robust; the exact magnitude is not, and we would not defend it to the decimal.

What VAN builds against it. Every formulation is weighted to what the crop actually removes and placed at the stage it is drawn, rather than sold as one bag for a season. Crop-specific nutrition → · The full national picture →

Who to talk to

Commercial

Supply, pricing, own-brand manufacturing and distribution.

Muhammad AliChief Commercial Officer

Research & development

Formulation work, trials, plant capability, and a chemistry that does not exist yet.

Fahim AsgharLead, Plant and Product

Regulatory & testing

Registration, PSQCA licensing, specifications, and laboratory analysis.

Bilal Ahmed KhanLead, Regulatory and Testing

Ask for the person by name on +92 42 35762215, or write to info@van.com.pk and say which of the three you need. The WhatsApp line at the foot of every page on this site is the same number.