Pharma manufacturing news in brief
pharmafile | November 22, 2011 | News story | Manufacturing and Production |Â Â manufacturing and productionÂ
Pfizer and Julphar plan facilities in Saudi Arabia, plus updates from Custom Processing Services, Metrics and China’s Tianyin Pharma.
Gulf Pharmaceutical Industries (Julphar) of the United Arab Emirates has entered into a joint venture with Cigaleh Group to build a 300 million-riyal ($80 million) manufacturing facility in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, that will serve markets across the Middle East. The plant will be located in the King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) and is expected to produce branded generic products when it comes online in early 2014.
Staying in Saudi Arabia, Pfizer has taken over ownership of a 65,000 sq. m. plot of land that will be the site of its first manufacturing plant in the Gulf region. The Middle East has been on Pfizer’s list of key emerging markets since 2009, with the potential to bring in $1 billion or more in sales. Key factors include enforcement of intellectual property rights, good infrastructure for trials and rapid regulatory review of new products.
US contract manufacturing organisation (CMO) Custom Processing Services has opened its new facility in Exeter, Philadelphia, designed to allow it to expand its operations to include the production of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). The 42,000 sq. ft. facility features cleanrooms in addition to new capacity in micronising, jet milling and related services.
Metrics Inc has started offering API filling into capsules at its potent and cytotoxic ingredient facility in Greenville, North Carolina, thanks to the purchase of an Xcelodose encapsulator system from Pfizer subsidiary Capsugel. The system allows Metrics to directly fill active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) into capsules – without excipients – at a rate of several hundred capsules per hour. Metrics also installed a custom-built isolation system for the equipment, for total containment levels approximating 30ng per cubic meter of room air.
Tianyin Pharmaceutical‘s macrolide antibiotic manufacturing facility in Jiangchuan has passed internal quality assessments for the first batch of its azithromycin API, indicating that it meets the GMP standards laid out by China’s State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA). The plant is currently gearing up to start selling azithromycin into world markets in 2012.
Phil Taylor
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