Farmak pharmaceutical company, one of the largest exporters of pharmaceuticals, has opened an office in the United Arab Emirates, and plans to further strengthen its expansion in the Middle East and localization in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, its press service said on Tuesday. According to the press release, the company’s products have been presented in the Middle East market since 2016.
“While selling drugs through local distributors, the company audited the market potential and analyzed the product niches of the region’s pharmaceuticals. This year, in order to consolidate business management in the Middle East, Farmak’s management decided to open an office in the UAE,” the company said in the press release.
The new headquarters will be headed by Mourad I.Habib, who previously served as CEO of Tabuk Pharmaceuticals and led Sandoz’s Middle East operations for over eight years. According to Habib, who is quoted in the press release, the opening of the office in the UAE is only the first strategic step for Farmak; in the future, the company plans to strengthen its expansion in the region and localization in Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
The company said that at present, Farmak’s production facilities have successfully passed certification in the UAE government bodies. The company also registered a number of injectable drugs produced by Farmak, which are already being purchased at public and local hospital tenders in the region.
“The Middle East market is not new for us, and we are actively scaling up our presence in this region. We have chosen the United Arab Emirates as the center of activity in the Middle East,” Business Development Director of Farmak Viktor Kostiuk said.
At the same time, he recalled that the UAE has a reputation as a state with a very high level of the national healthcare system and strict regulation of activities related to the production and distribution of medicines. “The fact that Farmak products are represented on this market once again confirms the high level of quality of our products,” Kostiuk said.
Farmak is the leader of the Ukrainian pharmaceutical market. The company’s product portfolio includes more than 220 complex-component modern medicines. Among the main directions are endocrinological, gastroenterological, cardiological, neurological, anti-cold and other drugs.
The UAE office is the sixth international office of the company. In 2020, Farmak increased its export deliveries by 40%. Today, the manufacturer’s products are represented in more than 30 countries of the EU, Central and South America, the CIS, the Middle East and Asia.
Farmak pharmaceutical company (Kyiv) in the first half of the year ranked fifth in the pharmaceutical market of Uzbekistan, the company’s share was 2.3%.
Anton Zubov, the director of marketing and sales to the CIS countries of Farmak, told Interfax-Ukraine that in January-June 2021 the company increased sales in the Uzbek market by 61% in monetary terms compared to the same period in 2020.
“Our growth would have been even higher, however, during the pandemic, we were forced to limit the export of enoxaparin sodium (included in the COVID-19 treatment protocols) in favor of meeting the needs of the Ukrainian patient as a matter of priority,” he said.
According to Zubov, Uzbekistan is a key country in the company’s export sales. In the structure of shipments of Farmak products to the CIS countries, it occupies 50%.
Speaking about the main drivers of market development, Zubov noted the focus on the purchase of vaccines and the rapid growth of COVID-associated drugs, mainly antibiotics and anticoagulants.
“It was the increase in the consumption of these drugs that led to such a significant increase in the market this year,” he said.
Zubov stressed that export is a strategic direction for Farmak, and Uzbekistan ranks first in its overall structure.
“According to the export assessment data for the first half of 2021, Farmak is the undisputed leader among Ukrainian pharmaceutical companies supplying their products to the CIS countries. Our share is 32%, which is more than twice the share of our closest competitor. The growth for the same period in relation to the previous year amounted to 23%, this year – 9%. The market share increased by 1.4 percentage points,” he said.
Zubov said that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the first place was taken by the Flenox drug, which is used to treat and prevent blood clots.
In addition, the endocrinological portfolio of the company, with the key drug Dialipon, is also in demand.
The company also notes a consistently high demand for the antiviral group, in particular, for the Amizon drug and the Picolax laxative drug.
At the same time, Zubov noted that, like many countries of the CIS region, Uzbekistan is trying to protect the interests of domestic producers.
“We see that Belarus is moving this way, introducing strict quotas on imported goods and restricting imports on pharmacy shelves. In Kazakhstan, for example, there is a “third is a crowd” rule, when, if there are two offers from local producers, the third offer from the importer is automatically withdrawn. Uzbekistan also actively defends the interests of its manufacturers. Assessing the obvious trends, our company plans to localize production of solid dosage forms in the territory of this country,” he said.
According to Zubov, at present, Farmak is actively developing a project to localize production in Uzbekistan on the basis of a pharmaceutical cluster, which is being built near Tashkent.
“Farmak has already declared its intentions to be localized in Uzbekistan. At the moment, we are actively negotiating with the directorate of the pharmaceutical cluster and are now at the stage of negotiating an investment agreement, “he said.
Zubov recalled that the declared volume of investments is $ 10 million, but “already now we see that, in fact, the amount of investment is likely to exceed the originally planned one.”
“Good equipment and specialists are expensive,” he explained.
Zubov said that traditionally the pharmaceutical market of Uzbekistan is the fourth largest in the CIS. According to IQVIA, its volume in 2020 amounted to $ 1.3 billion against $ 1.6 billion in Kazakhstan, but Uzbekistan is developing more dynamically and may take third place in 2022.
In January-June 2021, the pharmaceutical market of Uzbekistan grew by 75% in monetary terms (in U.S. dollars) and by 45% in natural terms (in the number of packages).
Farmak pharmaceutical company (Kyiv) was the first among Ukrainian pharmaceutical companies to implement the SAP SuccessFactors system to automate the most important and time-consuming processes in the field of personnel management, and is introducing a new module – SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting.
According to a press release from the company, the SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting module will cover and automate the entire recruiting process – from sending applications to find a person to starting a job.
In addition, the module makes it possible to analyze the work of recruiters using HR performance metrics.
“HR specialists will be able to work more efficiently with resume databases, keep records of internal and external candidates, form groups of the most relevant applicants according to the application for recruiting and save the results of interviews,” the company says.
According to Viktoria Kondrashikhina, the HR director of Farmak, this approach will significantly reduce labor costs for finding specialists and accelerate the filling of vacancies.
“Actively digitalizing its business, Farmak pays great attention to the automation of HR processes. For three years now, we have been using the SAP SuccessFactors module, which has transferred to online the setting, cascading and coordination of goals, annual assessment of corporate and managerial competencies, the formation of individual development plans, and personnel reserve. Last year, we began to introduce a module that automates staff training. This will simplify and accelerate the process of acquiring new knowledge and move from paper to digital data management. And also to develop e-learning with elements of gamification, making learning more flexible and effective. Now we are introducing recruiting automation for even greater efficiency and freeing up the time of HR specialists for other strategic tasks,” she said.
Farmak is the leader of the Ukrainian pharmaceutical market. The company’s product portfolio includes more than 220 complex-component modern medicines. Among the main directions are endocrinological, gastroenterological, cardiological, neurological, anti-cold and other drugs.
Pharmaceutical company Farmak (Kyiv) will set up a representative office in Vietnam.
As the company said in the information disclosure system of the National Securities and Stock Market Commission, such a decision was made by its supervisory board on August 19 in order to carry out economic activities in Vietnam.
Farmak is the leader of the Ukrainian pharmaceutical market. The company’s product portfolio includes about 200 brands. Among the main directions are endocrinological, gastroenterological, cardiological, neurological, anti-cold and other drugs.
The company annually reinvests up to 90% of its profits in development. In total, more than $310 million have been invested in the modernization of production since 1995. Annual investments in research and development are approximately $15 million.
Over 2020, Farmak increased its net profit by 7.8% compared to 2019, to UAH 1.138 billion, and sales income reached UAH 7.5 billion.
The export share increased to 29.6% in total sales. Export deliveries increased by 40% over the year. The company exports its products to more than 25 countries around the world.
Farmak pharmaceutical company (Kyiv) is investing EUR 30 million in the construction of an innovative research R&D center in Kyiv.
According to a press release from the company, the center is to open in 2023.
According to Executive Director of Farmak Volodymyr Kostiuk, the decision to build an R&D center was made a few years ago due to the expansion of the geography of presence and the portfolio of medicines.
In the new center, in particular, analytical laboratories will be concentrated, they will have about a hundred liquid and gas chromatographs and a number of modern devices for the development and testing of drugs.
In addition, the R&D center will house a technological laboratory with equipment for the development of finished drugs with various methods of their delivery to the human body and the implementation of personalized medicine protocols of the 21st century.
In the new R&D center, it is planned to continue working in three main areas: finished dosage forms, proprietary active pharmaceutical ingredients, as well as an innovative area in which Farmak has been working since 2015 – biotechnological active pharmaceutical ingredients. All processes will be digitized.
In addition, on the basis of the new complex, a special location will be equipped for young scientists who are not employees of the company, where they can engage in scientific activities and create prototypes of drugs.
The concept design of the complex was developed by Makhno Studio.
Farmak is the leader of the Ukrainian pharmaceutical market. The company’s product portfolio includes about 200 brands. Among the main directions are endocrinological, gastroenterological, cardiological, neurological, anti-cold and other drugs.
JSC Farmak pharmaceutical company (Kyiv) has launched the project “Electronic dossier of a series of medicinal products,” upon completion of which paper-based records of information on the production of a series of medicines will be completely replaced by electronic ones. According to the company’s press release, the project partner was Siemens, which introduced similar systems for the pharmaceutical companies Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, Takeda, etc.
The electronic dossier of a drug batch includes all the necessary protocols: from quality control of raw materials to information on all stages and parameters recorded during the manufacture of the drug.
The company clarifies that the introduction of an electronic dossier minimizes the risk of operator error, optimizes the technological process and allows real-time monitoring of the situation at the site, and also provides complete statistics for calculating the overall efficiency of the equipment
In addition, the electronic dossier allows an authorized person to analyze online all indicators of the drug for deviations and release a batch of the drug remotely, from anywhere in the world.
“Digitalization is a requirement of our time. As every citizen of Ukraine has an electronic passport, so each series of drugs should have its own electronic dossier. We are interested in the deep processes of digitalization, so we introduce electronic quality certificates, electronic research protocols, electronic dossiers of drug series and much more,” Executive Director of JSC Farmak Volodymyr Kostiuk said.
Farmak is the leader of the Ukrainian pharmaceutical market, produces medicines in all 14 therapeutic groups. Among the main directions are endocrinological, gastroenterological, cardiological, neurological, anti-cold and other drugs. Annually it introduces to the market about 20 new complex component modern drugs. Currently, the company’s product portfolio includes about 400 drugs.
