Company Watch

Ajanta Pharma to commission its API facility in September 09

Usha Sharma - Mumbai

The Rs 323 crore Mumbai-based pharmaceutical company Ajanta Pharma is investing Rs 28 crore for setting up new Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) facility for high volume products at Walunj, Aurangabad. The company is targeting that its new facility's full fledged commercial production will commence by the end of September 2009. The company has arranged required funds from internal accruals and partially from Exim Bank.

Arvind Agarwal, Chief Financial Officer, Ajanta Pharma said, "Our CAPEX plan of 2009 is working on as per our schedule. Recently, we have commenced our formulation as well as R&D facility and are now aggressively working on new API facility at Walunj which will hopefully complete by the end of September 2009. We have designed a new small API facility for captive consumption."

The company's new API facility will have quality assurance and quality control system in place accordingly. Initially, from the new facility the company is looking for high volume items and we will also have pilot plant for scaling up R&D batches activity. To start with, it has plans to work on cardiac, ophthalmology and dermatological therapeutic segments. Ajanta has strong product basket for specialty niche. Currently, in its pipeline nearly 50 more products are at different stages of completion and are expected to enter the market in another three years. "From the beginning our focus remained on specialty therapeutic area. The company’s product pipeline is for existing therapeutic area but they are now planning to explore two to three new therapeutic segments on specialised niche itself," informed Agarwal.

Its new R&D facility is in Mumbai and is spread across 20,000 sq ft. It has eight- nine labs for formulation development, analytical development and stability studies. Overall, it has a manpower strength of 250 people, out of which 210 are in R&D.

In the current fiscal the company intends to hire 50 more people for its R&D unit and 75 people for its new API facility. The company has also expanded its production capacity of tablets and capsules from 900 to 1500 and 120 to 300 per annum respectively.

Over last seven years, the company has grown consistently and achieved 11 percent growth for the financial year 2008-09 with a turnover of Rs 323 crore. Looking ahead, it is targeting 15 percent growth from the current fiscal. The company is also extending its global footprint and is aiming to enter the Latin American market.

u.sharma@expressindia.com