Kemwell eyes more pharma contracts

Kemwell, a Bangalore-based formulations contract manufacturer, is eyeing more pharmaceutical contracts from its new oral solids facility. The facility was built recently with an investment of $12 million. It has a capacity to make 5 billion tablets.

Subhash Bagaria, chairman and managing director, Kemwell, said, "The new oral solids facility has got EMEA GMP-compliance and this allows the company to partner more global pharmaceutical customers."

The company's customers include six of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies in the world and it manufactures five of the top 10 pharmaceutical brands in India. Recently it completed construction of its new oral solids facility in January 2008, dedicated to exports to the US, Europe and Japan.

Kemwell has contracts with a couple of European pharma majors and has begun technology transfer from the EU. Kemwell has long-standing relationships with innovator companies for the Indian market such as AstraZeneca, Bayer, GSK, J&J, Novartis and Pfizer.

“In the pharmaceutical industry, North America, Western Europe and Japan make up over 80 per cent of the market. These countries are presently looking to cut costs and increase productivity by outsourcing to low-cost countries like India and China. Our new oral solids' facility will cater to such markets,” added Bagaria.

and build on the 20 years of experience accrued from Kemwell," added Subhash Bagaria.

“Now, with the compliance certification we now want to extend our services to similar customers for their global needs,” said Anurag Bagaria, vice president, business development at Kemwell.

"The new plant will increase present capacity by over 10 times thus catapulting the company into an area of high growth and has flexibility built into it and is designed to manufacture uncoated, sugar-coated, film-coated tablets, effervescent tablets, and capsules with batch sizes ranging from 5 kg to 1,000 kg,” he added.