Chennai-based Fette Compacting Machinery India Pvt Ltd (FCI), the Indian subsidiary of the Germany-based machine tool manufacturer Fette Compacting, has launched competence centre in Goa to provide tablet compression testing and related services for pharmaceutical industry in India.
The company, which imports and serves tablet pressing machines to the Indian pharmaceutical companies, would provide laboratory facilities for compression trials and sample production, basic trials to analyse material properties of tablet mixture and support in proof of concept studies for Indian clients through the facility, said Venkatasubramanian, managing director, FCI.
The competence centre is set up with an investment of around Rs 5 crore. The facility is also equipped as a training centre to provide hands on training to the employees of the pharmaceutical clients to handle the high end machines.
The centre is basically to support our clients in India, both the domestic and multi national pharma companies which has manufacturing facilities in India, to test and analyse the flowability and compressibility of their tablets thus improving the quality of the end products, said Venkat.
Besides, the company is also evaluating options to set up an engineering and development centre to develop machine tools for Indian pharmaceutical industry.
At present, the machines are imported from China and Germany for Indian customers. Plans to set up a development centre in India is on the drawing board, but is in a nascent stage to reveal more, he said.
FCI, launched in India in 2006 as a division of Fette Germany, became a subsidiary company in 2010. It has so far installed around 80 machines in the country and targets to complete sales of around 35 to 40 machines this year.
In the last fiscal year, the company has closed revenue of around Euro 10 million (approximately Rs 64 crore). It is expecting to clock in a revenue of around Euro 14 million (approximately Rs 88 crore), he added.