Eisai looks to India for API production
pharmafile | January 8, 2010 | News story | Manufacturing and Production, Research and Development | Eisai, India
Japanese drugmaker Eisai has started operations at a manufacturing and research facility in Visakhapatnam, southern India, which will be the second-largest produce of active pharmaceutical ingredients in the group when fully operational.
The opening of the facility had been planned for December 2009, but had to be postponed after civil unrest in the region related to plans to create a new state, called Telangana, in the Andhra Pradesh region.
Full production is expected to get underway later in 2010 after validation and inspection of the facility by regulatory authorities.
The facility in Visakhapatnam (colloquially known as Vizag) is located on a 50-acre site and will make both APIs and finished dosage forms, as well as conduct research into new formulations. It was set up with an investment of 2,500 million rupees ($54 million).
The unit will have a capacity of around 30 tonnes of API a year initially, with the potential to double that capacity in future.
It is the second-largest manufacturing site in the Eisai network after the Kashima plant in Tokyo, and will be a major factor in Eisai’s ongoing plan to boost sales to emerging markets, with more than 90% of the production expected to be for export. The core markets for this will be Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe.
Key products at made at the plant will be Eisai’s Alzheimer’s disease treatment Aricept (donepezil) and gastrointestinal drug Paritec (rabeprazole sodium).
Aricept is currently manufactured in India by contract manufacturer Wockhardt while GlaxoSmithKline makes Paritec under the terms of a co-marketing agreement with Eisai.
In 2005, Eisai became the first Japanese drugmaker to set up a subsidiary in India in order to tap into local expertise in manufacturing and formulation science, as well as provide a base for carrying out clinical trials in the country.
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