Zydus Cadila gears up for Brazil in April

/Home/Lyophilization Articles & Reports

Zydus Cadila gears up for Brazil in April
FEBRUARY 24, 2005
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
AHMEDABAD: Zydus Cadila is all set to enter the lucrative generics market in Brazil in April. The Rs 1,170 crore pharma company, which recently received an approval from ANVISA, the food and drug regulatory authority in Brazil, to market four generic products, is hoping to get permission to sell five more by March-end.
?In the first phase, we will be launching the sales in Brazil with nine products in April. The sales are expected to touch $2m in the first year itself,? Zydus Cadila?s executive director Ganesh Nayak told ET. In the second phase, beginning around September ?05, Zydus will start tapping Brazil?s branded formulations market.
Mr Nayak said that the company plans to submit 15 drug dossiers with ANVISA by the end of this fiscal and a total of 24 by March ?06.
Zydus Cadila had set up Zydus Healthcare Brasil, a limited liability company in Brazil, in September ?02 to strengthen its global presence and scan the markets there. Also, ANVISA had approved Zydus Cadila Healthcare?s manufacturing facility at Moraiya in November ?02, thus clearing the way for the company to make a foray into Brazil?s $5.6bn pharmaceuticals markets, with oral tablets, capsules and soft gelatine capsules.
On the domestic front, Zydus plans to double the capacity of manufacturing ?Vaxirab? ? anti-rabies vaccine at its Moraiyya facility, from the current 2m dosages per year.
The necessity for expansion has stemmed from the growing demand ? both domestic and exports ? which is evident from the fact that Zydus lapped up a 10% share in the Rs 200 crore anti-rabies vaccine market within 18 months of launching it.
"The market for anti-rabies vaccine is expected to grow at 20 % and we are hopeful of increasing our market share to 15 % in the next two years. However, catering to domestic demand would be our priority rather than going aggressively on exports", says Mr Nayak.
The company will pump in Rs 9 crore for the expansion, scheduled to be completed by June 2005. A large portion of this total investment is the cost of "lyophilization"- the cutting edge technology.
Vaxirab -- a highly purified duck embryo rabies vaccine is manufactured in technical collaboration with Berna Biotech of Switzerland. Globally, 75,000 deaths occur due to rabies each year, of which 35,000 deaths are reported from India alone. As per the WHO reports, three million cases of dog bites are reported in the country every year.