Shantha plans Rs 150 crore facility

Shantha Biotechnics Limited (SBL) will invest Rs 150 crore over the next three-four years in setting up a diagnostic equipment manufacturing facility and in increasing its manpower.

The new facility would come up on a 25-acres offered by the state government near the company's existing manufacturing base on the city outskirts.

Varaprasada Reddy, managing director of SBL, said phase-I trials of one of the three monoclonal antibodies related to lung cancer treatment, currently under development, would be launched in the US in January 2008, and is expected to be completed in the next three years.

A new high-speed vial fill and finish suite, set up at a cost of Rs 25 crore at Shantha's existing vaccine manufacturing facility, was inaugurated by state industries minister J Geeta Reddy on Saturday.

The new facility take the capacity of the company to 3 lakh vials a day from the existing one lakh vials.