Square Pharma eyes export of insulin
Thursday, 20 May 2010
FE Report
Square Pharmaceuticals has become the country's third medicine maker to set up an insulin manufacturing unit in hopes to keep the highly expensive drug within patients' purchasing capacity.
The pharma giant has already started production at the state-of-the-art Insulin Manufacturing Unit at the company's production headquarters in Gazipur.
The facility has been designed by Telstar SA of Spain, a world expert in producing advanced sterilisation systems for the global pharmaceutical industry, and the machinery being used here are of European origin, officials said.
Spread over 36,000 square feet on the premises of Square Pharmaceuticals factory, the manufacturing facility cost Tk 900 million and would produce 13 million units (glass ampoules) annually.
The unit is now manufacturing insulin products using highly purified recombinant human insulin crystals in its formulation with different dosage types for covering a full spectrum of short, intermediate and long acting insulins, said its managing director Tapan Chowdhury.
The company has imported machinery of Modular Aseptic Compact (MAC) system, which ensures precise and sterile production using a consolidated filling platform, with zero tolerance for cross contamination in manufacturing, the officials said.
The core objective of the unit - which has been built in compliance of US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) and European Medicine Agency Current Good Manufacturing Practice (EMEA cGMP) standards - is to make available a whole range of world-class insulin products at an affordable price for the people of Bangladesh.
Mr Chowdhury said imports account for around 80 per cent of the country's Tk 1.10 billion insulin products market. "Our unit will increase the share of local production by at least 10 per cent, thus reducing dependency on foreign imports to some extent."
The prices of the insulin drugs produced by Square would be available at 22 per cent less price than that of the imported products, said Mr Chowdhury, also a former caretaker government adviser.
"We hope to keep the expensive drug within the reach of our patients," he said.
The number of diabetic patients in the country is
Continued to page 16
Square Pharmaceuticals has become the country's third medicine maker to set up an insulin manufacturing unit in hopes to keep the highly expensive drug within patients' purchasing capacity.
The pharma giant has already started production at the state-of-the-art Insulin Manufacturing Unit at the company's production headquarters in Gazipur.
The facility has been designed by Telstar SA of Spain, a world expert in producing advanced sterilisation systems for the global pharmaceutical industry, and the machinery being used here are of European origin, officials said.
Spread over 36,000 square feet on the premises of Square Pharmaceuticals factory, the manufacturing facility cost Tk 900 million and would produce 13 million units (glass ampoules) annually.
The unit is now manufacturing insulin products using highly purified recombinant human insulin crystals in its formulation with different dosage types for covering a full spectrum of short, intermediate and long acting insulins, said its managing director Tapan Chowdhury.
The company has imported machinery of Modular Aseptic Compact (MAC) system, which ensures precise and sterile production using a consolidated filling platform, with zero tolerance for cross contamination in manufacturing, the officials said.
The core objective of the unit - which has been built in compliance of US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) and European Medicine Agency Current Good Manufacturing Practice (EMEA cGMP) standards - is to make available a whole range of world-class insulin products at an affordable price for the people of Bangladesh.
Mr Chowdhury said imports account for around 80 per cent of the country's Tk 1.10 billion insulin products market. "Our unit will increase the share of local production by at least 10 per cent, thus reducing dependency on foreign imports to some extent."
The prices of the insulin drugs produced by Square would be available at 22 per cent less price than that of the imported products, said Mr Chowdhury, also a former caretaker government adviser.
"We hope to keep the expensive drug within the reach of our patients," he said.
The number of diabetic patients in the country is
Continued to page 16