Hyderabad-based Aurobindo Pharma is going in for large-scale automation of its manufacturing processes as part of a corrective action plan to reduce manual intervention.
According to the company spokesperson Tathagato Roychowdhury, the company had embarked on the corrective after the US Food and Drug Administration issued an import alert last month for detention of its Cephalosporin products produced at its facility here.
He told Business Standard that the company had engaged a US consultant to implement the plan. The corrective was expected to be completed by six months.
Aurobindo earlier stated that the import ban on certain injectables and medicines made at its Cephalosporin facility could impact the company's revenue — about $2.5 million a month.
Meanwhile, Greenstone LLC, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Pfizer, the global pharmaceutical major, said it was voluntarily recalling two drugs, Citaloprom and Finasteride, distributed in the US market.
Roychowdhury said this recall was on account of some mis-labelling and not related to import ban imposed by USFDA. "There has not been much material impact on the financial front due to this," he said, adding that only 500 bottles of a lot of 2,500 were distributed when mis-labelling came to light. The value of the whole lot would be around $ 10,000. After the recall, we would examine how mis-labelling had happened. Though the entire lot was not affected, we would verify all the bottles as a precautionary measure,” he said.
