Lundbeck opens first Asian manufacturing plant
pharmafile | November 14, 2012 | News story | Manufacturing and Production |Â Â China, LundbeckÂ
Lundbeck has officially opened its first manufacturing facility in China and says it plans to launch three new drugs there over the next three years.
The plant in Tianjin is also Lundbeck’s first in Asia, although the Danish pharma company opened a research facility in Shanghai last year and has been expanding its presence in China since first launching products there via a joint venture set up in the early 1990s.
General manager of Lundbeck China Herman Santori, told the Global Times newspaper that the new plant will help it grow at ‘two to three times’ the prevailing rate in China, which has been around 20% in recent years.
The small plant – led by operations director Tina Jia – has been set up with an investment of around $7.5 million and employs less than 10 staff, focusing initially on the repackaging of Lundbeck’s Alzheimer’s disease drug Ebixa (memantine) for the domestic market.
Product is expected to start coming off the production line in the second quarter of 2013 after Lundbeck secure manufacturing licenses and GMP certification.
The firm currently has a total of around 300 staff working in China and has launched three of its products independently there since 2008, namely Xenazine (tetrabenazine) for chorea associated with Huntington’s disease and epilepsy drugs Sabril (vigabatrin) and Onfi (clobazam).
The company said it expects to launch additional products in China over the next few years, including a depot formulation of schizophrenia drug aripiprazole in 2013 and new antidepressant vortioxetine (LuAA21004) later the same year.
Other drugs earmarked for launch in China include new treatments for Parkinson’s disease and alcohol dependence, it added.
China’s expenditure on pharmaceuticals has been racing ahead, reaching $66.7 billion in 2011 and expected to top $80 billion this year, according to data from Business Monitor International.
The opening of the new facility comes at a time when Lundbeck has been reducing its cost base in Europe to help it deal with declining revenues on blockbuster antidepressant Cipralex (escitalopram).
In the summer it announced plans to cut 600 jobs in Europe whilst continuing to invest in the US and emerging markets.
Phil Taylor
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