Hindustan Syringes plans annual capacity of 3.5 bn pieces by March 2022

Auto-disable syringe capacity ramped up to 1 bn pieces a year

As the Covid-19 inoculation drive gathers pace, procurement of syringes, a critical component in the delivery of vaccine jabs, has picked up as well.

Leading syringe maker Hindustan Syringes and Medical Devices (HMD) said it has achieved a production capacity of one billion Auto-disable syringes for Covid-19 vaccination per year. “At present, HMD is producing more than 420,000 syringes of various types an hour at our factories spread over 11 acres in Faridabad industrial district in Haryana,” Rajiv Nath, managing director of HMD said. In June 2020 the capacity was 500 million pieces of 0.5 ml AD syringes. By March 2022, HMD aims to ramp up capacities to 1.25 billion pieces of AD syringes, taking its total syringe capacity to 3.5 billion pieces a year.

“In April 2020 itself, we started to rapidly ramp up HMD’s capacity and re-engineered the standard Disposables Syringes lines to manufacture in their place auto-disable syringe for vaccination. HMD initiated investment of over $15 million (Rs 100 crore) in May from its own resources, without government support to mass produce specialty syringes even before purchase orders were in sight,” Nath said.  

The company said it has got fresh orders for 132.5 million pieces from the Centre. It has already supplied 471.35 million syringes to the Government of India by September end. An additional 13 million pieces are also on the way, the company noted, adding that it has already preponed the delivery schedule for syringes.

The original commitment was to supply 442.5 million pieces by September.

“To ensure there is no shortage of syringes, HMD has preponed the supply commitments to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and against 442.5 million pieces committed by Sep, HMD has already supplied 471.35 million pieces. An additional 13 million pieces are also on the way,” Nath said.