Hikal to invest Rs 200 crore to set up units

Hikal, a Mumbai-based contract research and manufacturing player for pharmaceutical and crop protection companies, is investing Rs 200 crore to set up four new manufacturing facilities in Bangalore and Mumbai and a research and development centre in Pune.

Hikal, which today signed a long-term contract with Bayer CropScience for supply of active ingredients for crop protection products, will set up a multi-purpose facility at Taloja in Navi Mumbai with an investment of over Rs 30 crore. Supplies will begin from the second half of this year.

"We have the supply agreements with four of the five leading multinational companies in the crop protection business," said Jai Hiremath, vice-chairman and managing director, Hikal.

He said the company was also setting up two manufacturing units in Bangalore to supply pharmaceutical products for Pfizer and

Alpharma of the US. Hikal had signed an agreement with Pfizer in January to supply active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) for a lifestyle drug and with Alpharma in July 2007 to supply APIs for the veterinary sector.

Hikal is also setting a new pharmaceutical intermediate manufacturing facility at Panoli near Mumbai. A new research and development centre in Pune will undertake contract research on processes for major pharmaceutical and crop protection companies. The centre "� Accura Research "� would house over 250 scientists, said Hiremath.

"We prefer to remain as an end to end contract research and manufacturing (CRAMS) player for agro-chemical and pharmaceutical industries," said Hiremath.

He said the company would eye a turnover of over Rs 1000 crore within a few years with an average year-on-year growth of over 30 per cent. In 2007, Hikal had a turnover of Rs 233.7 crore, with Rs 136.8 crore from crop protection products business and Rs 96.9 crore from the pharmaceutical contract manufacturing business.