Bengal Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals Ltd (BCPL), the multi-product public-sector company currently under a revival plan, will effect changes in its products profile by focussing more on pharmaceutical lines than cosmetics and home products.
BCPL's plan for upgrading the pharmaceutical business received a boost with the company gaining ISI 9002 licence from the Bureau of Indian Standards(BIS). It had already been granted good manufacturing practice certificate.
Prabir Roy, the company's managing director, claimed that BCPL is the only pharmaceutical company in the country which has been granted ISO 9002 licence by BIS.
These two prestige acquisitions will sharply improve the pharmaceutical scenario of the company, Roy said.
The company will change its product line this year with the pharmaceutical products targeted to be 48 per cent of the total BCPL production, and cosmetics and home products 42 per cent, leaving the balance 10 per cent for the chemicals sector.
The production till now has been at 44 per cent for pharmaceuticals, 46 per cent cosmetics & home products, and chemicals 10 per cent. The process of shifting away from cosmetics and home products started about five years ago when the pharma sector constituted only 20 per cent of the total production, while cosmetics & home products logged a huge 70 per cent and the chemicals 10 per cent.
Roy said that in the cosmetics and home products area the competition is stiff as is evident
from the fact that some big names in this line of business are freely indulging in price undercutting.
To survive in this area BCPL will create some brand equities rather than competing head on with the multinationals. In the chemicals sector, however, BCPL is keen to enter into new areas for which new investments will be made.
The process of identifying new products is on. The company has, for a long time, been tied up with the production of ferric and non-ferric alum and sulphuric acid. Roy avoided giving details of what his plans for the pharmaceutical segment were.
