Grindeks opens API plant in Latvia
pharmafile | June 30, 2011 | News story | Manufacturing and Production |Â Â Grindeks, pharma manufacturing newsÂ
Latvian pharmaceutical company Grindeks has opened a new active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufacturing plant that it predicts will add around 10 million euros to its annual turnover when operating at full capacity.
The primary API made at the 8.9 million-euro plant will initially be ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) which is used for the treatment of primary biliary cirrhosis and gallstones and being developed for other applications, including some forms of cancer.
Grindeks started construction of the plant in 2009 after signing a collaboration with German drugmaker Marenis Pharma, which specialises in supplying UCDA bulk ingredients. The deal calls for 30 tonnes of UDCA to be supplied to Marenis in 2011.
Around 35 new jobs have been created as a consequence of the plant’s construction, according to the director of Grindeks’ API business unit Andris Jegorovs.
UDCA is relatively hard to make, and in earlier years was harvested from bears, often kept in cruel conditions. Now almost all the world’s 400-tonne demand for the ingredient is supplied from synthetic sources, produced by a small group of five manufacturers.
“In 2014, Grindeks plans to capture about 15% of the UDCA API world market,” said the company in a statement.
Grindeks also plans to launch its own UDCA-based finished products within the next two to three years, and says its turnover be boosted by another 10 million euros a year from this range.
In the first quarter of this year Grindek’s turnover was 14 million lats (€19.7 million), up 4% on the same period of 2010, with APIs accounting for 1.55 million lats, up by a third.
Most of the company’s revenues come from overseas. The main finished dosage form export markets are Russia, other Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries and Georgia, while for APIs the bulk of output goes to Germany, Japan and the Netherlands.
Phil Taylor
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