In 2022, Lekhim JSC (Kyiv) reduced its net profit by 36.5% compared to 2021, to UAH 247.308 million.
According to the company’s announcement in the NSSMC’s information disclosure system, the performance indicators will be considered by its shareholders at an extraordinary meeting on December 4.
In addition, the shareholders plan to amend the corporate governance system and re-elect Valeriy Pechaev as Chairman of the Board of Directors, Tatyana Pechaeva as Deputy Chairman of the Board, Olga Pechaeva as Chief Executive Officer, and Valentina Mazuryk, Lesya Redkina, Lyubov Lazko, and Svetlana Pechaeva as members of the Board of Directors.
Lekhim JSC owns 100% of Lekhim-Obukhov LLC, 98.2% of Lekhim Kharkiv PrJSC, 81% of Technolog (Cherkasy region), 100% of Lekhim-Vilnius CJSC and 100% of Lekhim’s foreign representative office in Uzbekistan.
Lekhim produces more than 200 medicinal products of almost all therapeutic groups, and annually registers more than 10 new drugs. its products are exported to more than 35 countries. One of Lekhim’s anti-tuberculosis drugs is prequalified by the WHO.
As reported, in 2023, Lekhim Group of Pharmaceutical Companies signed a sublicense agreement with the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) for the production of a generic version of the innovative Japanese antiviral drug Ensitrelvir manufactured by Shionogi, which can be used to treat COVID-19. Seven pharmaceutical companies signed sublicense agreements, and Lekhim is the only Ukrainian pharmaceutical manufacturer among them. In addition, the agreement was signed by three generic pharmaceutical manufacturers from China, two companies from India and a company from Vietnam.
The pharmaceutical company Lekhim plans to launch production of vaccines against COVID-19 in 2022, the press service of Kharkiv City Council reported.
“This is a very important project. We do not know what the situation will be in a month or two with a pandemic. And the fact that Kharkiv enterprise is going to produce a vaccine and invest about EUR 25-30 million in production is very good,” Ihor Terekhov said.
He also said that Kharkiv local authorities are now doing everything possible to prepare for a likely new wave of coronavirus: drugs, necessary medical equipment and oxygen stations are being purchased.
According to the information posted on the City Council’s website, the CoronaVac vaccine, created by the Chinese company Sinovac Biotech, will be produced in Kharkiv. In 2021, Lekhim Group became the official supplier of this vaccine in Ukraine.
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.
The Lekhim Group of Companies plans to supply the first 500,000 doses of the Chinese vaccine against coronavirus (COVID-19) CoronaVac produced by Sinovac and purchased by the British agency Crown Agents at the expense of the national budget.
The company told Interfax-Ukraine on Thursday, the first delivery under this contract is expected on July 5.
In addition, the company said that on July 29, Lekhim carried out the last delivery of this vaccine under a contract with state-owned enterprise Medical Procurement of Ukraine.
As reported, Lekhim supplied 1.9 million doses of CoronaVac vaccine to Ukraine under a contract with the Health Ministry.
The contract with Crown Agents provides for the delivery of 7.7 million doses of this vaccine to the country.
Pharmaceutical company Lekhim (Kyiv) as an official representative of the Chinese vaccine manufacturer Sinovac Biotech plans to transfer the first batch of the Chinese CoronaVac vaccine against coronavirus (COVID-19) disease to state-owned enterprise Medical Procurement of Ukraine after the completion of laboratory control on Saturday.
“The laboratory control ends tomorrow. We have no result yet, it will be tomorrow, and tomorrow we will deliver the vaccine to the Medical Procurement of Ukraine. This issue has already been settled, they confirmed the delivery address,” the company told Interfax-Ukraine on Friday.
Lekhim said that the Medical Procurement of Ukraine will be engaged in further delivery of the vaccine.
In addition, the company confirmed negotiations to extend the contract with Sinovac by another 5 million doses.
“The issue of increasing the volume of contact has been discussed, but there is still no concrete answer from the Chinese side. We expect information from them next week, but the already purchased 1.9 million doses should be delivered, although the terms are constantly shifting,” the company said.
As reported, on April 8, the Medical Procurement of Ukraine confirmed to Lekhim its readiness to accept the supply of the COVID-19 vaccine produced by Sinovac Biotech Ltd. under a procurement agreement for the national budget’s funds.
The Lekhim group of pharmaceutical companies (Kyiv) plans to register in Ukraine a vaccine against coronavirus (COVID-19) disease produced by the Chinese company Sinovac Biotech until February 5, after the vaccine is registered in Brazil, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Lekhim group of pharmaceutical companies Valeriy Pechayev said at a press conference held at Interfax-Ukraine on Wednesday.
“The company received confirmation from the Health Ministry that when registering a vaccine in Brazil, Ukraine will register the vaccine as well. From January 25, Brazil will start immunization with the Sinovac vaccine, they should register the vaccine by January 25. As soon as registration in Brazil is completed, we will submit documents to the State Expert Center. I think we will register the vaccine before February 1-5,” he said.
Pechayev said that Lekhim received from Sinovac a quota of 5 million doses of vaccines for sale in Ukraine in the first half of 2021, of which 1.913 million doses are planned to be purchased by the Health Ministry.
“Until February 15, Lekhim is receiving applications from enterprises for the supply of vaccines. Lekhim will check customers for compliance with the cool chain. The price for customers will be UAH 504 per one dose of vaccine. The profitability of the deal for Lekhim is 4-5%,” he said.
In turn, Director of the Department for Development of the Lekhim group of pharmaceutical companies Mykhailo Rensky said that it is difficult to talk about the timing of vaccine supply, since they are prescribed only for a contract with the Health Ministry.
According to Head of the National Technical Group of Experts on Immunoprophylaxis, pediatric immunologist Fedir Lapiy, as clinical studies in Brazil have shown, the effectiveness of the vaccine to prevent mortality was 100%.
Lapiy said that there is no generalized report on clinical trials for any of the COVID-19 vaccines. “After clinical studies, manufacturers take data from different countries and combine them. There is no such data from any manufacturer yet,” he said.
At the same time, Lapiy said that it is impossible to assess the effectiveness of the Russian vaccine against COVID-19, since it failed the third phase of clinical trials.
Sinovac Biotech is a Chinese vaccine producing company founded in Beijing in 2001 with a capacity of 300 to 500 million doses of six types of vaccines for humans and animals per year. Sinovac’s main products are vaccines against hepatitis A (prequalified by the WHO) and B, influenza, mumps, chickenpox, which are registered and approved for vaccination in 34 countries around the world.
The Lekhim group of pharmaceutical companies was founded in 1992. It includes three enterprises: PJSC Technolog (Uman) (at the final stage of obtaining WHO prequalification), JSC Lekhim-Kharkiv (Kharkiv) and the management company JSC Lekhim (Kyiv).
CoronaVac is an inactivated vaccine. It uses a traditional vaccine mechanism in which a non-living virus that cannot replicate in human cells is used to activate the immune system. Phase 3 trials of the Chinese vaccine have already taken place in Brazil and Indonesia. Tests are ongoing in Turkey and Chile.
