ScinoPharm completes new API plant, targets China growth

By Gareth Macdonald

- Last updated on GMT

SinoPharm completes API plant in China. Lovely day for it.
SinoPharm completes API plant in China. Lovely day for it.

Related tags New facility Pharmaceutical drug Active ingredient

Taiwan-based API maker ScinoPharm has completed construction of a new $133m (€96m) manufacturing and process development centre in Changshu, China.

The new facility will make active pharmaceutical ingredients for both the Chinese and international markets and – according to ScinoPharm - is the first plant in China built in accordance with manufacturing standards issued by the SFDA​ in 2010.

The graph above is based on data from ScinoPharm financial reports over the past few years, the 2013 data is not available.

ScinoPharm's revenue figures indicate that the US is the API maker's biggest individual export market, followed closely by Ireland and Italy. Aside from Taiwan, ScinoPharm groups all of its other export markets together which makes it hard to tell how many APIs the firm sells in China at present.

Nevertheless, the firm clearly wants to build its business in China and sees the new facility – which has already received drug production licenses for 4 API products from the Chinese FDA – as a key part of this effort.

In a press statement the firm said that: “serve as the base for the company to develop its API business in China​” claiming that it has already developed nine of the top 20 oncological products used in the country.

Export market

The site also complies with US and EU current good manufacturing practices (cGMP) according to ScinoPharma, which said that the plant also gives it capacity to “quickly respond to the demands of the market​.”

The construction of the new facility was accompanied by some significant changes at ScinoPharm, beginning in 2010​ when US generics and biosimilars firm Watson, now named Actavis​, sold its 31% stake in the API maker.

Since then ScinoPharm has gone public​, gown its API export​ business and signed several major manufacturing contracts, including for the production of the APIs for Clinical Data’s antidepressant Viibryd​ and Supernus Pharmaceutical’s antiepileptic Trokendi XR​.

And, earlier this year, the API maker took its first step toward developing its own range of drug products. In January the firm teamed up with delivery technology firm Foresee Pharmaceuticals to develop a range of peptide-based medicines.

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