The company wants to achieve a 1-billion turnover in the Far East and in India by 2022. In 2018, its area-specific turnover grew up 18%. The Florence-based group aims to have Sabarubicin – used in fighting a particular type of lung cancer – awarded the prestigious class 1 status from the Chinese regulatory authority. The activity is growing in India as well.
MILAN, March 8 (Class Editori) – "We are working with Chinese regulatory authorities to shorten approval times for our products as much as possible, in virtue of the reduction in the registration protocol system from one year to 60 days," said Albert Lim, CEO of Menarini Asia-Pacific. The company is a subsidiary of the big Italian pharma group, totaling a 3.6 billion turnover in 2017, and lately focusing on developing its activity in the Far East – in China in particular.
And Luca Castrucci, head of the Asia-Pacific segment, said that the goal is to increase the region's turnover to 1 billion by 2022. "What we have worked on in recent years is starting to get recognition, even from those countries where no one used to know us before. We may even benchmark the 1 billion before the set date, as long as we manage to get established on the Chinese market. Perhaps we can achieve that through new acquisitions and licenses," said the manager, and added that the area is giving a positive profitability back at the moment.
In China, Menarini has been focusing on Sabarubicin, a drug specialized in fighting a particular type of lung cancer, and is trying to get it registered as class 1 – the most important for the Chinese regulatory authority. Yet, it normally takes at least six years to start commercializing a product in China, as well as to carry out on-site research, requiring investments of up to 15 million euros even for products already registered in the rest of the world.
Truly, the road leading to the Chinese market is not an easy one to walk on. "Each package must be traceable, starting from the manufacturer all the way down to the seller. The Chinese authority notifies the serial numbers to the manufacturer, who has to put a specific code on every package. Then, the products must be recorded in the provinces' pharmaceutical codex," said a Menarini manager to Milano Finanza. "After that, one must go to each and every hospital to have them add the product to their own codex as well. GPs does not exist in China, so the heart of the market beats in the hospitals".
Menarini landed in China in 1990, after acquiring the Berlin Chemi, and is now active in Shanghai, Beijing, and Wuhan. Since 2017, it has also become the first fully-foreign pharmaceutical company in the country, with the local market yielding a 50-million-euro turnover.
The second most important market in the area is India, awarded the title of largest pharmacy in the world – with its high local consumption and low production costs (30% less than the US) catching the interest of big multinationals. And if the Made in India is plagued by low production standards, foreign multinational can help improve this perception.
Since 1994, Menarini has been selling in India a hundred products – 20 of which licensed – creating a turnover of around 19 million euros. "The market is very big and growing, with an annual +8% in value. But the problems are increasing as well," said Pio Mei, MD of the company.
According to Mr. Mei, average revenues per package are low – about 58 euro cents – even for high quality products and this, together with poor patents protection, is contributing to the diffusion of copies. "We won't be releasing our latest antibiotics for hospital infection treatment, due for distribution in the European and the Asia-Pacific regions. The authorities would not agree to an adequate price, and negotiations tend to be quite not transparent anyway," said Mei to MF International in a recent interview.
(Source:Class Editori)
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