Pfizer Invests EGP 100m to Add Production Line, Warehouse

Pharmaceuticals company Pfizer plans to add a new liquid production line and a warehouse with investments worth EGP 100m in the upcoming months.
br> Chairman Abdel Aziz Shahin said Pfizer Global recently agreed to fund the construction of a pharmaceutical warehouse within the company’s factory in Egypt with investments worth EGP 70m. The parent company is currently considering adding a production line for liquid medicines at a cost of between EGP 25m-EGP 30m.
br> Pfizer has approximately 70 medicines on the Egyptian market and hopes to offer approximately six additional innovative products to treat breast cancer, blood thinning, tumours, and mental illnesses on the Egyptian market over two years. The company aims to achieve EGP 1.1bn in sales over the next year, compared to EGP 1bn last year, representing a 10% increase, according to Shahin.

“The company aims to increase sales to earn a place among the five top-selling companies on the Egyptian market. We are currently in seventh place,” he added.
br> He expects pharmaceutical sector sales to reach $4.4bn or EGP 33bn this year, compared to the $3.9bn recorded last year.
br> According to Shahin, foreign companies operating on the Egyptian market have acquired 50% of sales, despite producing only 30% of units, due to their relatively high prices on the local market. This percentage is expected to drop to 48%, while local private and public companies will acquire a 52% share following recent expansions in higher-priced Hepatitis-C drugs.
br> The highest-selling pharmaceutical companies on the Egyptian market include five foreign companies: Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi, Pfizer, and Merck, along with local companies EIPICO, Pharco, Eva Pharma, and Amoun.
br> Shahin expects major foreign companies to acquire local pharmaceutical companies in the near future in the same vein as Canada’s Valeant Pharmaceuticals’ recent acquisition of Amoun. He said that foreign investment in the sector should not be cause for concern, as it supplies new investments and provides work opportunities, while also creating innovative new products.
br> He said that the pharmaceutical sector has suffered from pricing and registration issues for a long time, but that the Ministry of Health recently succeeded in cooperating with Pharma to agree on a new law for registration. Work on the law is currently underway, and it will help reduce the registration period to just 18 months, instead of four years.
br> The Ministry of Health recently formed a committee, which includes a group of companies, to agree on prices for exported medicines. Shahin expects the ministry to agree on new prices for export at the beginning of next year.

Regarding intellectual property rights, which international pharmaceutical companies hope to apply in Egypt, Shahin explained that the Ministry of Health is studying a proposal to institute a system to track pharmacists and monitor pharmaceutical packaging from the time it leaves the factory to the time it reaches the pharmacist in order to prevent commercial fraud.
br> Pharmaceutical companies are currently working on an agreement with the Pharmacist Union to remove expired medicines from shelves and “clean the market”. Shahin said that foreign companies have no issues withdrawing all their medicines from markets whatever the volume.
br> He explained that pharmaceutical companies have complied with market cleaning work since 2012 and agreed to remove all medicines bearing their logos. The companies discovered that a significant amount of counterfeit medicines exist.

Shahin estimated the volume of foreign companies’ expired medicines to amount to approximately 1%-1.25% of the total, and accused manufacturers of a third party of exacerbating the crisis.