KYIV. June 16 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Private joint-stock company BIOFARMA (Kyiv) plans to enter the Polish, Turkish and Chinese markets and continue its development in the Mongolian and Vietnamese markets, Head of the supervisory board Kostiantyn Yefymenko has told reporters.
“New markets we’re developing now are Mongolia and Vietnam. The newest that we will develop are Poland, Turkey and China,” he said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony devoted to the launch of the first phase of the new biopharmaceutical research and production facility in Kyiv region on Tuesday.
Yefymenko said that BIOFARMA plans to bring two medicines to the Chinese market – Albumin and 10% liquid intravenous immunoglobulinum.
“We’ve handed [over] our dossiers. They were translated to register [our] own products in China,” he said.
Yefymenko found it difficult to say when BIOFARMA’s medicines would enter the Chinese market.
“It’s hard to say when this would happen in China. I can say when it will happen in the CIS states, as we understand the way of thinking there, but it’s hard to say about China,” he said.
He also said that by late 2015 BIOFARMA plans to export blood products worth $7 million and he expressed his confidence that the company would not face problems in receiving permits to export anymore, happened last year.
“We started exporting blood products only in May, as they did not give us permits. After complicated negotiations we’ve managed to avoid paying fines of $1.5 million for disrupted supplies. We’ve managed to agree with partners, but we could have lost a good contract, markets and reputation. When the issue reached the boiling point we gave a press conference. High-ranking authorities read the materials of the press conference and the issue was settled. BIOFARMA received this permit for 15 years, and only in 2015 we had problems. We hope that we would not face these problems in the future,” he said.
“Ukraine has the most powerful pharmaceutical industry among the former Soviet countries. This should be developed. This cannot be lost,” Yefymenko said.
As reported, on Tuesday BIOFARMA launched the first stage of the new biopharmaceutical research and production facility. Investment in the project totaled over $40 million. BIOFARMA plans to invest $30 million in the construction of a fractionator for blood product production. The second stage could boost blood production capacity by 90 tonnes a year today.
