U.S. pharmaceutical giant opens first Asian plant
U.S. pharmaceutical giant opens first Asian plant
SINGAPORE (AFP): U.S. pharmaceutical giant Schering-Plough launched its first Asian primary manufacturing facility here yesterday amid optimism that its regional turnover will expand up to 30 percent by 2000.
"We are expecting sales to grow 25 to 30 percent per year in Asia over the next three years and in many of the economies, market share could double," Raul Cesan, president of Schering- Plough Pharmaceuticals told reporters.
He said that the company's turnover expectations in Asia were "very much higher" than the industry's annual growth target of 10 percent in the region.
The Asia-Pacific pharmaceutical market is worth US$15 billion at present.
The New Jersey-headquartered Schering-Plough has cornered only about 1.5 percent of the Asian market so far although it global sales turnover last year touched $5.7 billion, company officials said.
Cesan said the company's high sales expectations in Asia were based on the big demand for drugs to treat allergies and asthma, medical problems surfacing at a rapid rate in the region.
Allergy and respiratory products form the company's largest therapeutic group, with sales last year of more than $2 billion.
"The market for asthma and allergy products is growing at 15 to 20 percent per year on a worldwide basis. One of the reasons could be due to environmental factors and better diagnostics," Cesan said.
Schering-Plough, whose pre-tax profit rose by 15 percent to 1.6 billion dollars last year, has posted 11 consecutive years of double-digit growth despite a period of severe downward pressure on health care costs in all major world markets, officials said.
The $214.3 million Singapore facility launched Friday will produce ingredients used in drugs to treat asthma and prostate cancer, and for cardiovascular therapy and dermatological use, said Patrick Yeung, managing director of the company's Singapore branch.
The ingredients would be shipped to Schering-Plough's 30 plants worldwide for the production of pharmaceutical products.
The Singapore facility, launched by Health Minister Yeo Cheow Teong, consists of a multi-product pharmaceutical chemicals plant and a dedicated steroids manufacturing plant.
Similar primary manufacturing facilities of the company are located in Puerto Rico and Ireland.
Minister Yeo said the facility was in line with the positioning of Singapore as a value-adding partner for foreign companies in upstream pharmaceutical activities.
Schering-Plough also signed an agreement Friday with the BioInformatics Center of the National University of Singapore under which the U.S. company will employ software developed by the center to aid them in their drug discovery and development efforts.
Labor-short and land-starved Singapore is positioning itself as a research and development center for high-value-added industries in the Asia-Pacific region.