Upfront

Ipca labs to invest Rs 60 crore

Usha Sharma - Mumbai

The Mumbai based Ipca Laboratories is expanding its foothold in domestic as well international markets. For the current fiscal, the company has plans to invest Rs 60 crore for upgrading its existing manufacturing facilities as well as for its research and development (R&D) centres across India.

Elaborating on these plans, Premchand Godha, Managing Director, said, "For the current fiscal, we will be mostly investing in automation segment. At our Athal, Silvasa plant, we are investing Rs 30 crore for adding up two full lines of packaging and tablet coating machineries imported from European countries including Germany and Italy. This year we already entered Peru and Venezuela, in another two-three months we will explore Columbia and Zambia with 10-12 products from existing therapeutic areas."

The company's formulation business in India comprises eight marketing segments. During the year, it introduced nine products in the domestic market. Its etodolac formulation was launched under the brand name of Etova, Metoprolo Succinate and Amlodipine. Revelol-Am, a novel injectable antibiotic combination of ceftazidime and sulbactum as well Gardceh have performed well. Its new launches have contributed almost 26 percent of the domestic formulation sales. At present it employs 5000 people including field force and staff and in the current year, it will be adding 10 percent to its existing sales force. "Currently, in our product pipeline we have 12-15 new products at different stages of completion for existing therapeutic segments. We are also exploring new therapeutic segments, namely cancer and dental. At present, we are carrying out research work at our R&D centre and are targeting that the products should be in market in another one year," Godha added.

u.sharma@expressindia.com