Drug makers double sales in three years

http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=170187
Drug makers double sales in three years

Sajjadur Rahman
Top medicine makers recorded robust growth last year at an average 25 percent, riding on people’s growing health awareness and purchasing power, according to the market players.
Also, increased rural penetration of the manufacturers and a significant development in healthcare sector have contributed to the growth.
Bangladesh medicine sales reached Tk 3,700 crore three years ago, which nearly doubled to
Tk 7,000 crore in 2010. The industry players forecast the growth trend would take the sales volume to Tk 10,000 crore in 2011.
Square, Beximco, Eskayef, Incepta and Acme are the top five manufacturers by sales and growth rate.
Beximco grew faster than other companies at a staggering 33 percent in 2010 with Tk 523 crore sales.
Incepta’s sales and growth rate were Tk 665 crore and 31 percent respectively, followed by Acme’s Tk 600 crore and 17 percent.
Eskayef logged Tk 426 crore in sales and the growth rate was 27 percent, the third highest pace in the year, said a company official.
“Increasing health consciousness and buying capacity have helped the industry grow consistently,” said Mizanur Rahman Sinha, managing director of Acme Pharmaceuticals, one of the fastest growing manufacturers.
Sinha predicts the industry’s total sales at Tk 10,000 crore in the current year.
Managing Director of Incepta Pharmaceuticals Abdul Muktadir echoed the same reason for the market growth, but he is not surprised to see the success.
Muktadir said 5 percent GDP growth helps the pharma industry grow at 15 percent, and 6 percent and 7 percent growth makes it 20 percent and 25 percent respectively.
Sales of Square Pharmaceuticals, the market leader, were Tk 1,270 crore in 2010, up from Tk 1,116 crore a year ago. Sales grew 14 percent year-on-year .
AM Faruque, managing director and chief executive officer of Apex Pharma, finds Bangladesh market to be a potential one. He thinks affordability and availability of medicines will help the market boom in the next few years.
Faruque said Apex Pharma, which is not a big player now, will emerge as one of the top five companies in five years. The present turnover of the company is Tk 60 crore only.
“Apex is coming in a big way,” said Faruque.
Bill Mckean, a UK pharmacist who has recently joined Apex Pharma as its chief technical officer, sees a huge prospect and high-quality players in the local market.
According to him, a large population and relaxation of trade related intellectual property rights (TRIPS) for least developed countries are contributing to the market growth.
Business Monitor International in its latest report (Q1 2011) said Bangladesh has moved up one place to occupy the 14th position in 17 regional markets surveyed in BMIs Pharmaceutical & Healthcare Business Environment Ratings for the Asia region.
Still, Bangladesh has a long way to go, the report said.
This adjustment now sees Bangladesh placed below Vietnam and above Sri Lanka. Bangladesh’s pharmaceutical rating is 40.2 out of 100, a figure that has changed marginally from the previous quarter but remains lower than the regional average of 53.1. Globally, Bangladesh occupies 67th position in BMIs 83 market-strong pharmaceutical universe.

Pharma companies brace for new phase

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Pharma companies brace for new phase
Analysts suggest innovations as patent looms on generic drugs

Sayeda Akter

Bangladeshi pharmaceutical companies should prepare to maintain growth in local sales and exports and remain competitive in the post-2016 period, when patents will be imposed on all generic drugs, analysts suggest.

Upgrading product quality is one area the companies should focus on, they said. Other suggestions include capacity building in research and engineering and the setting-up of an active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) park to help local companies face the challenge.

Capacity building means innovations, strengthening reverse engineering, training local people and upgrading technology. An API park will help produce raw materials locally and innovate ingredients as well.

The word ‘generic’ is used to describe a product, particularly a drug, which does not have a trademark. For example, ‘paracetamol’ is a chemical ingredient that is found in many branded painkillers and is often sold as a generic medicine in its own right.

In 2001, under the trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS), the World Trade Organisation allowed developing and poor nations to produce generic drugs until 2016 without compulsory licences or paying the patent holders.

According to TRIPS, the least-developed country members of WTO will not have to apply for copyrights for a period of 10 years from the date of application, so they will be able to create a viable technological base for public health.

With that, the WTO trade rules have allowed developing and poor countries — mostly without own drugs industry — to issue a compulsory licence to a third country, such as India or Brazil, to produce cheap generic drugs and to import these to address a public health crisis.

Mustafizur Rahman, executive director of Center for Policy Dialogue (CPD), thinks Bangladesh is yet to enjoy the full benefits of the deal.

“As a least developed country (LDC), we must make use of the opportunity to make lifesaving drugs without paying for patents or licensing. Our local pharmaceutical plants are of international standards and we have better infrastructure, which made it easy for us to benefit from the WTO deal.

“The government needs to take policy measures to safeguard the increasing pharmaceutical industry,” Rahman said. “Initially, the government should set up an API park to enhance capacity with advanced research facility.”

“Least developed countries have sought an extension of the deadline from 2016 to 2021. We have to aggressively negotiate on this point to extend the deadline by five more years,” Rahman said.

Dr Zafrullah Chowdhury, a trustee of Gonoshasthaya Kendra, echoed Rahman. He said the government should encourage investment in raw materials production to face intense price competition in the coming days on locally-manufactured products.

“The first effect of the post-2016 era will be the cost of patents, which will increase raw material prices, and eventually the prices of locally manufactured products,” Chowdhury said.

“At present, most large local pharmaceuticals have to depend on imported raw materials. So it is high time the government encouraged investment in raw material production,” he said. “Otherwise, the present growth in local sales and exports may not sustain.”

There are 250 small, medium and large local and multinational pharmaceuticals operating in Bangladesh, while only seven are producing raw materials.

Currently, the local pharmaceutical market is worth around Tk 7,000 crore. Around 80 percent of total raw materials are imported mainly from China, said industry insiders.

However, local manufacturers are optimistic about maintaining present growth in the post-2016 period.

Mizanur Rahman Sinha, managing director of Acme Laboratories, said the rising prices of medicines will not have a harsh impact on the local consumption of lifesaving products.

“We are ready to embrace the challenge that is likely to hit many Third World pharmaceutical manufacturers. As a method of caution, we are constantly upgrading the quality of our manufacturing plants and products.”

“The quality of our products is far better than any other LDC and most major companies have obtained MHRA (UK) and FDA (US) certification for their products. So I do not think medicine consumption will drop overnight,” added the Acme boss.

Mohammad Mostafa Hassan, general manager of Eskayef Bangladesh Ltd, said huge investment is required to produce raw materials.

“We are optimistic that advanced technological bases to produce new molecules are likely to be developed locally by 2013-14, when investment in the sector will increase manifold,” he said. “We plan to invest in raw material production by that time.”

However, Nazmul Hasan, member of the parliamentary standing committee on health ministry, thinks the time limit should extended, as developing and poor countries are yet to optimally benefit from the deal.

“Most developing and poor countries are yet not enjoying the benefits of the WTO deal. At the same time, WTO still could not finalise the list of patented products,” he said. “We need more time to safeguard the sector, and the timeline should be extended up to 2021.”

Acknowledging poor government preparations in this regard, he said the government is set to handover the API to local pharmaceuticals by the end of this year, which will accelerate capacity building.

sayeda@thedailystar.net

Pharma ingredient project begins next month

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Pharma ingredient project begins next month
Bdnews24.com . Dhaka

The construction work of the proposed API industrial park is likely to begin in April, officials said on Friday.

‘Hopefully, the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, will inaugurate the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients project,’ ABM Khorshed Alam, additional secretary of the industries ministry told the news agency.

‘We’ll disburse the money needed for acquiring 200 acres of land in Bausia under Gazaria upazila in Munshiganj next week for the project,’ he added.

According to him, Tk 65 crore is needed for the land, while the total project cost is estimated at Tk 235 crore. ‘The cost was first set at Tk 213 crore, but was increased as price of land has gone up,’ project director ABM Musfiqur Rahman told the news agency.

Ministry officials met on Thursday to review the project’s progress and decided to begin the construction work immediately.

The project is being implemented by the Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation.

The project period has been extended by one year due to complication in land acquisition.

‘We’re expecting to complete the development by Dec 2011,’ Rahman said of the project, which first started in 2008.

The cost of the land will be recovered from the plot owners, who will have to pay 60 per cent of the total land cost during allotment. The remaining 40 per cent will be paid in instalment by the plot owners.

BSCIC will provide infrastructural facilities like roads, drainage, electricity, gas and fire-fighting arrangement to the entrepreneurs.

A joint group, consisting of officials from BSCIC and the ministry of environment, is currently working to acquire the latter’s approval, Rahman added.

The project, once completed, will cut import of pharmaceutical ingredients by 90 per cent, which will ultimately save a lot of foreign currency.

Contract manufacturing can boost medicine exports to Tk 200b a year

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Contract manufacturing can boost medicine exports to Tk 200b a year

Jubair Hasan

Bangladesh can export drugs worth Tk200 billion a year if the local medicine makers upgrade their facilities to a level that’ll enable them to do contract manufacturing for foreign pharmaceuticals, experts said Sunday.

Drug manufacturing is becoming costly in the highly regulated western market, prompting major pharmaceutical companies to contract out drug making to companies in low-cost countries.

“Contract manufacturing is one of the major growth areas in global drug industry. And Bangladeshi companies can be one of the major beneficiaries of the fast growing sector,” said ABM Faroque, president of Bangladesh Pharmaceuticals Society (BPS).

“The country’s top 10-12 drug makers have state-of-the-art drug plants and if they upgrade their facilities further, they’ll be in a position to sign lucrative contract manufacturing deals with foreign companies,” said Faroque, also a professor of pharmaceutical technology at Dhaka University.

“It will pave the way for a new revolution in the pharmaceutical sector. It could be our next garment industry and create hundreds of thousands of high-paid jobs,” he said.

Under the system, foreign medicine companies visit local pharmaceutical plants to inspect their facilities and manufacturing standards. If they are convinced with the standards, the companies place manufacturing orders in exchange for annual fees.

The contracted companies manufacture medicines following strict formula given by the foreign firms and then ship the medicines back to the buyers.

“I know several local firms are now considering signing contract manufacturing deals with foreign companies from the European Union and North American,” Faroque said.

He made the comments during a two-day international conference on contract manufacturing in the city. The BPS and the Canada-based Global Strategy Exchange (GSE) organised the event at a hotel.

Drug experts from the United States, the European Union and Canada shared their experience during the conference and urged Bangladeshi firms to invest more in improving their production facilities.

Faroque said leading drug makers such as Square, Beximco, Incepta, ACI and Renata and Aristopharma have upgraded and expanded their manufacturing facilities in recent years, keeping their eyes on export market.

“They will need further up-gradation of their plants to woo foreign buyers for contract manufacturing jobs. They will also have to train their workers and pharmacists to the level of foreign countries,” he said.

Faroque said studies by the BPS have found that the contract manufacturing by the local companies could alone fetch export orders worth Tk 200 billion. Presently India, Turkey and China dominate the sector.

According to BPS, the medicine exports have increased to Tk 10 billion during the period of April-March this fiscal year, which was Tk 6.0 billion during the same period last year.

Bangladeshi drug makers are now exporting medicines to 72 countries across the globe – mainly to the poor African and Asian nations. The companies are also making up 97 per cent of the local medicine demand.

Export value of pharmaceuticals, though small, is growing at 50 per cent per year. Exports increased from $8.2 million in 2004 to $28.3 million in 2007 and expanded further in last two of years.

Dr Sayma Ali, head of marketing of Renata Pharmaceuticals, said contract manufacturing can help transfer costly and most-modern technology to Bangladesh.

“It cuts production costs, helps introduce good manufacturing practices and makes local firms more efficient,” she said.

Ali said a few leading medicine manufacturers have got green signals from EU markets to export medicines under the system recently. But they did not step into the USA market, which is highly regulated.

Noor Hossain, General Manager of Aristopharma, said Bangladeshi companies now follow good manufacturing practice (GMP) standards, set by the UN World Health Organisation (WHO).

“I am confident that our plants will meet the standards required by top global firms,” he said. “It’s a matter of time before the foreign firms make Bangladesh a top destination for contract manufacturing jobs.”

Anti-cancer drugs now made in Bangladesh

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Anti-cancer drugs now made in Bangladesh
Staff Correspondent

Beacon Pharmaceuticals Limited yesterday launched a few anti-cancer drugs, first of its kind in Bangladesh.

Beacon Managing Director Mohammad Ebadul Karim said, “Beacon Pharmaceuticals is the first to produce anti-cancer drugs in the country. The drugs with brand names Fluroxan, Gemoxen, Platixen and Xelpac are already available in the market. Docexan, Xurobin and Filgrast will be made available soon.”

The manufacturers said the prices of the locally produced anti-cancer drugs would be 20 to 30 percent less than the imported ones.

Prices of the newly marketed products range from Tk 90 to Tk 12,000, they added.

“The Cisplatin drug which is imported from the Netherlands with the brand name Platocin costs Tk 800 while the same drug produced by Beacon with the brand name Platinex costs Tk 550 per vial,” told Monjurul Alam, manager, international marketing of the company to The Daily Star.

One course Pacloitaxel imported from Pfizer Company of the US with the brand name Taxol costs Tk 39,000 while locally manufactured Xelpac costs only Tk 12,000, he said.

The manufacturers also claimed that there are many anti-cancer drugs available in the market and most of them are smuggled from India. Patients get each of the items at Tk 300 only.

Around 12 lakh people across the country are suffering from cancer currently and every year two lakh are newly diagnosed with the disease. The anti-cancer drugs manufactured by Beacon will play an important role in treating such a huge number of patients in the country, said health experts.

Prof Syed Modasser Ali, adviser to the prime minister, was present as chief guest of the programme held at a city hotel. Prof Pran Gopal Datta, vice chancellor of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University, presided over the session.

Square Pharma sets up insulin manfcg unit

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Square Pharma sets up insulin manfcg unit
FE Report

Square Pharmaceuticals, the country’s largest medicine maker, has set up an insulin manufacturing unit in hopes to keep the highly expensive drug within patients’ purchasing capacity.

Finance Minister AMA Muhith inaugurated the state-of-the-art Insulin Manufacturing Unit at a ceremony at the Square’s production headquarters in Gazipur Wednesday.

Health Minister Prof AMF Ruhul Haque, health directorate secretary Sheikh Altab Ali, Square Group chairman Samson H Chowdhury and its managing director Tapan Chowdhury and diplomats of different countries were present on the occasion.

Spread over 36,000 square feet on the premises of Square Pharmaceuticals factory in Gazipur, the manufacturing facility cost Tk 900 million to be built.

The unit will manufacture insulin products using highly purified recombinant human insulin crystals in its formulation with different dosage types for covering a full spectrum of short, intermediate and long acting insulins.

The core objective of the unit – which has been built complying to US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) and European Medicine Agency Current Good Manufacturing Practice (EMEA cGMP) – is to make available a whole range of world-class insulin products at an affordable price for the people of Bangladesh, Tapan Chowdhury said later at a press briefing.

He said imports account for around 80 per cent of the country’s Tk 1.10 billion insulin products market. “Our unit will increase the share of local production by at least 10 per cent, thus reducing dependency on foreign imports to some extent.”

Also a former caretaker government adviser Tapan said the prices of the insulin drugs produced by his company would be available at 22 per cent lesser price than the imported products.

Square is also eyeing to export insulin products after meeting the local demand, said Mr Tapan adding that his company now exports medicines to 35 countries.

Health Minister Ruhul Haque said the number of diabetic patients in the country is increasing day by day. “But most of the insulin products are imported from abroad. So it is important to have domestic manufacturing facility to produce the life-saving drug at affordable prices.”

5 pharma items to get entry to Uzbekistan market

Posted on November 11, 2010 by bangladesheconomy| Leave a comment

http://www.newagebd.com/2010/nov/11/busi.html#4

5 pharma items to get entry to Uzbekistan market
Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha . Dhaka

Bangladesh got permission for exporting five pharmaceutical items to Uzbekistan.

Bangladesh will receive a certificate of registration soon to this effect.

Uzbekistan health minister Ikramov Adhkan Ilkhamovic declared this at a meeting with commerce minister Faruk Khan, now in Uzbekistan, said a commerce ministry release.

During the meeting, Khan informed the Uzbekistan health minister that Bangladesh’s pharmaceutical products are well acclaimed in the world and being exported to 70 countries.

Among others, chief of pharmaceutical department of Uzbekistan Shodjalil Sharakhmedov, Bangladesh ambassador to Uzbekistan Mohammad Imran, were present during the meeting

Earlier the commerce minister inaugurated a three-day international trade fair titled ‘Mediexpo-2010’ at Uz Trade Centre at Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan.

After inaugurating the fair, he urged the Uzbekistan businessmen to take effective step to strengthen the trade relation between Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

A total of nine countries are displaying pharmaceutical products in 42 stalls, out of which 10 stalls are from Bangladesh.

Square Pharma, Beximco, Pharmatech Ibne Sina, Healthcare Pharmaceuticals, Hamdard and General Pharma are among Bangladesh’s medicine manufacturers.

Faruk Khan left here for Uzbekistan on Nov 7 leading a 12-member delegation to attend the inaugural session of the fair.

Square plans to export insulin

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Square plans to export insulin

Star Business Report

Square Pharmaceuticals Ltd plans to export insulin as it started producing and marketing the drug for the local market last month.

Ahmed Kamrul Alam, assistant general manager of the leading drug maker, said his company would serve diabetics with its new product — Ansulin — at a cost that is 22 percent less than that of the imported ones.

“We hope to keep the expensive drug within the reach of our patients,” he said.

The market size for insulin is over Tk 120 crore, of which around 80 percent are imported, according to industry insiders.

“Our unit will increase the share of local production by at least 10 percent, which will eventually reduce dependency on imported items,” said Alam.

Square holds a 20 percent share of the local market, and exports its medicines to more than 35 countries.

Square is the third company to produce insulin locally with Tk 92 crore in investment.

The company formally opened its insulin unit at Kaliakoir in Gazipur on April 28, and the factory has been built complying with the regulations of US Food and Drug Administration and European Medicines Agency.

The plant manufactures insulin products using highly purified recombinant human insulin crystals in its formulation with different dosage types for covering a full spectrum of short, intermediate and long acting insulin.

“We have imported machinery of Modular Aseptic Compact (monoblock) system, which ensures precise and sterile production using a consolidated filling platform, with zero tolerance for cross contamination in manufacturing,” Alam added.

At present, according to statistics of Diabetic Association of Bangladesh, around 6.5 million people in the country have diabetes.