The pharmaceutical company Lekhim plans to launch phase one of its plant in Uzbekistan in 2023 and open ampoule production, Chairman of the supervisory board of the Lekhim Group Valeriy Pechaev has said.
“In 2020, we created the Lekhim enterprise in Tashkent to sell domestic medicines and to organize production in Uzbekistan. The main thing was to find a site for production,” he told Interfax-Ukraine.
According to Pechaev, the company managed to find a plot of 3 hectares on the outskirts of Tashkent for the construction of the plant. The site is located three kilometers from the territory where the Uzbek government plans to organize a pharmaceutical cluster, but does not apply to it.
“We have selected a site, received a permit for perpetual use of land, developed and agreed on a project to master the entire territory and started construction in the spring of this year,” he said.
Pechaev said that since 2020, Lekhim has invested $2.5 million in this project, the total investment until 2023 will be about $10-12 million, and the total cost of the project is about $ 40 million.
“Now, we are financing the project from our own funds, but in 2023 we are planning to attract investments from the EBRD. We have long-standing good relations with them. We think that in 2022, when the buildings and structures are ready, we will attract them to buy equipment,” he said.
Pechaev said that Lekhim plans to attract financing from the EBRD, which will amount to about 30% of the charter capital. In the future, Lekhim plans to use EBRD loans in construction.
The project includes the creation of an ampoule production with an annual capacity of 150 million ampoules, the production of cephalosporin antibiotics with a capacity of about 15-20 million bottles and the production of solid forms of drugs (tablets, capsules) with a capacity of up to 1 billion pieces.
“The first stage, I think, will be launched at the end of 2023. It will be ampoule production. In addition, first of all, we will introduce an administrative building, a central laboratory of the plant, an energy workshop and a production workshop itself with an area of 4,500 square meters for three lines of injectable drugs. Each line produces 50 million ampoules. We will launch one line,” he said.
Pechaev said that in 2024, Lekhim plans to start building a facility to manufacture solid forms and antibiotics.
The company plans to annually produce products worth about $60 million in Uzbekistan. The plant will focus on the regional market, its products will be supplied, in particular, to Uzbekistan and Afghanistan and other countries of the region.
Pechaev said that “Uzbekistan today is a country with almost 35 million people, rich in natural resources, cheap gas and oil and, what is important, with a favorable investment climate and the protection of foreign investments declared by the state.”
“Therefore, today in Uzbekistan there is such a boom in investments and a fairly low cost of production,” he said.
Pechaev said that Lekhim also has a trade office in Lithuania, but there is no talk of organizing a production facility there yet.
In addition, the chairman of the supervisory board said that the company is currently also implementing two projects in Ukraine: the construction of a plant for manufacturing cephalosporin antibiotics in injectable and solid forms in Obukhiv (Kyiv region), as well as the launch of vaccine production at the Kharkiv Lekhim plant.
“I think that we will launch the plant in Obukhiv by the end of 2021. We plan to launch vaccine production in Kharkiv in the first quarter of 2022,” he said.
Pechaev said that the capacity of vaccine production will be about 40 million syringes per year.
The facility will produce vaccines against COVID-19 and influenza vaccines using technology transferred to Lekhim by China’s Sinovac Life Sciences.
“China has transferred both technologies to us – for the production of a vaccine against COVID-19 and for the production of a vaccine against influenza. We have already declared this in the Ministry of Health and asked to make a state procurement order with us for 2022 for 17 million doses of vaccines against COVID-19 and 3 million doses flu vaccines,” he said.
Pechaev said that further plans for the development of vaccine production will depend on the epidemiological situation. “I think the coronavirus will never end, and we will just do the annual flu vaccinations,” he said.
At the same time, Pechaev suggested that over time, the technology of inactivated vaccines against COVID-19, which is used to produce the CoronaVac vaccine, will replace the technologies by which other vaccines against COVID-19 are produced.
He said that since the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic, Lekhim has delivered 10.2 million doses of CoronaVac vaccine to Ukraine, including 1.9 million vaccines purchased through the state-owned enterprise Medical Procurement of Ukraine and 8.3 million doses purchased through the U.K. procurement agency Crown Agents.
Coal mining enterprises of Ukraine in January-August 2021 increased production of run-of-mine coal by 6.2% (by 1.154 million tonnes) compared to the same period in 2020, to 19.681 million tonnes, according to data from the Ministry of Energy.
According to the calculations of Interfax-Ukraine, in particular, coal mining enterprises managed by the ministry increased production by 2.2 times over the eight months of this year (by 2.223 million tonnes), to 4.021 million tonnes, which is largely due to the return of Dobropilliavuhillia assets from DTEK’s lease.
The mines of Donetsk region over the eight months of this year ensured production of 8.129 million tonnes of coal (more by 21.4% compared to January-August 2020), Luhansk – 176,700 tonnes (more by 33.6%), Dnipropetrovsk – 10.506 million tonnes (less by 2.9%), Lviv – 858,100 tonnes (more by 1.1%), and Volyn – 11,000 tonnes (less by 57.6%).
In August 2021, production of run-of-mine coal in the country fell by 27.6% (by 770,200 tonnes) compared to the same month last year, to 2.016 million tonnes.
Sri Lanka is interested in increasing the supply of food and industrial products to the Ukrainian market, the Ministry of Economy said following a meeting between Deputy Minister, Trade Representative of Ukraine Taras Kachka and State Minister of Regional Cooperation of Sri Lanka Tharaka Balasuriya. “The participants expressed interest in increasing the supply of food [tea, coffee, fruit] and industrial [textiles, clothing] products to the Ukrainian market,” the ministry said on its website on Friday.
In addition, the parties noted the prospects for cooperation in aircraft and shipbuilding, supplies of Ukrainian metallurgy products, energy and transport engineering, chemical industry and agriculture, recreational cooperation and tourism.
“The basis of our exports to Sri Lanka is traditionally agricultural products – vegetables, grains, oilseeds. Obviously, the trade potential between our countries has not yet been revealed. We, in turn, are open to cooperation in the trade and economic sphere and the implementation of joint business projects,” the ministry’s press service said, citing Trade Representative of Ukraine Taras Kachka.
The parties confirmed their readiness to create a joint intergovernmental commission as a platform for the development of trade and economic cooperation, the ministry said.
According to the State Statistics Service, the negative balance of trade with Sri Lanka in the first half of 2021 amounted to $10.154 million with an increase in Ukrainian exports to this country by 12.8% – to $9.22 million and an increase in imports from Sri Lanka to Ukraine by 18.1% – to $19.37 million over the specified period.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has said that he does not feel pressure from the United States on the economic interaction between Ukraine and China.
“I’m not saying that there are no signals from the United States regarding the relations of any countries in Europe with China. I’m not saying that there is no such thing, but we are a fairly independent country that chooses business partners for itself. If business is transparent and open and it creates additional jobs for Ukraine, this is a priority,” Zelensky said at the Yalta European Strategy Forum in the YES Brainstorming 2021 format in Kyiv on Friday.
Shanghai is developing a number of projects in the agro-industrial sector in Ukraine for a total of $17 million, sees prospects for cooperation in energy, infrastructure, agriculture, Deputy Director of Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce Zhu Yi has said.
“We now have six direct investment projects of Shanghai in Ukraine worth $17 million, related to agriculture, forestry, livestock and fisheries. The total volume of contracts that Shanghai concludes in Ukraine reaches $897 million, of which $278 million are related to telecommunications, development and gas production, drilling projects,” she said during the Kyiv Investment Forum 2021 on Friday.
According to her, the trade turnover between Shanghai and Ukraine in 2020 amounted to CNY 4.6 billion.
“I think cooperation between our countries can be mutually beneficial. The better we develop trade and exchange of investments, the more it will create opportunities for innovation and cooperation in energy, agriculture, infrastructure construction, manufacturing of industrial goods and other sectors,” Zhu Yi said.
Official rates of banking metals from national bank as of September 10
One troy ounce=31.10 grams
