Sopharma breaks ground on 16th manufacturing plant
pharmafile | December 14, 2010 | News story | Manufacturing and Production |Â Â Bulgaria, Sopharma, oral dosage forms, pharma manufacturing, pharmaceutica productionÂ
Bulgarian drugmaker Sopharma says it will press ahead with plans to build a new production plant for oral dosage forms which was formerly put on hold.
The company has now officially broken ground on the new facility, which will be located adjacent to the firm’s current injectables production unit in the Bulgarian capital Sofia.
The construction was originally due to get underway in 2007 but was postponed in favour of other investment programmes at the company.
Not only has the project been resurrected, but the scale of the build has also been upgraded and it will now be the largest facility in the company’s network by some margin.
Sopharma says it intends to spend around BGN 70 million ($47m) on the plant, which will have a capacity of around four billion dosage units a year and employ over 400 people. Previously, the intention had been to have a capacity of around three billion doses a year and a staff of 275.
The decision to start the build comes at a time of fast growth for Sopharma, which sells a broad range of generic pharmaceuticals, including oral, injectable and liquid formulations, and accounts for the bulk of Bulgaria’s pharmaceutical exports. It is also the only manufacturer of ampoule and suppository formulations in the country.
Sopharma already has 12 manufacturing facilities in Bulgaria, plus one each in Russia, Ukraine and Serbia. The company reported sales of BGN 154 million in the third quarter of 2010, up nearly 20% year-on-year. The bulk of its revenues (BGN 107 million) were exports via its subsidiaries in Russian, Ukraine, Poland, Latvia, Serbia and the USA.
The company said recently it plans to open a subsidiary in Poland, and also register products in China and Finland.
Phil Taylor
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