Orchid Chem To Increase Global Presence

Orchid Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals Ltd, the Rs 192-crore pharma export major, is expanding its presence in the global cephalosporin market by investing Rs 95 crore in building three new plants.

Company officials said one plant would be set up for sterile and non-sterile cephalosporins each and there would be another plant for formulations.

The company is the country's largest producer of oral and sterile cephalosporins and has a global market share of 13 per cent with a capacity of 480 tonnes per annum.

Of the capital outlay, Rs 25 crore will sourced internally. The rest will be foreign currency debt from State Bank of India and Bank of India.

Production from the non-sterile plant will be captively consumed for making sterile cephalosporins, company sources said. The sterile and non-sterile plants will come up in Alathur, near Chennai, at a cost of Rs 40 crore.

Orchid is also setting up a Rs 30-crore export oriented formulations unit, also near Chennai, which will have a capacity of 12 million vials per annum. The remaining Rs 25 crore of the Rs 95-crore corpus will be used for expanding into intermediates and raw materials, said company officials. Though a major part of the oral and sterile injectibles produced will be exported, around 25 per cent would be supplied to the domestic market, company sources said.

Initially, injectible cephalosporins will be manufactured after which the formulations range will be expanded, said company officials.

Orchid also plans to enter the US market after obtaining the US FDA approval for its manufacturing facilities, expected by this year-end. It is getting its products registered in Italy and expanding the product range by introducing four new generation oral and sterile cephalosporins this year.

Company officials said that they expect these measures to contribute an additional 20 per cent to the already healthy bottomline.