Biopharmaceutical company Biopharma (Kyiv) plans to invest from $20 million to $23 million in the development of a network of plasma centers by 2025, Biopharma President Kostiantyn Yefymenko said.
“We plan to invest about $15 million in the next three years (in 2021, 2022 and 2023) in the development of blood plasma processing facilities at our site in Bila Tserkva. And we plan to invest in plasma centers during this time about $20-23 million by 2025,” he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
Yefymenko said that the company already has seven plasma centers, including in Cherkasy, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Konotop, Shostka and Sumy.
In 2021, Biopharma plans to build four more plasma centers in Kamianske, Mykolaiv and Poltava.
“As for the fourth plasma center […] we are now thinking whether it will be Kryvy Rih or Kherson. We intend to build plasma centers and blood centers in every regional center of Ukraine in five years,” Yefymenko said.
The Sector X acceleration hub based on the Unit.City innovation park (Kyiv) has reported for the nine months of work with three acceleration areas – MedTech, Logistics and BeautyTech.
The press service of Sector X said that within the framework of acceleration tracks, the partners of the hub became Farmak pharmaceutical company, the Foxtrot group of companies (Kyiv) and the Ukrainian branch of the L’Oréal Ukraine cosmetics company.
As a result, while working with the accelerator startups, Farmak signed a cooperation agreement with two startups: Bicovery startup will receive $50,000 from the pharmaceutical group and another $30,000 from the angel investors of this company, and ComeBack Mobility startup will receive the first tranche of $100,000 from the group, $30,000 from the angels of Farmak, $40,000 from the French company Undisputed Paris SAS Frédéric Delfosse and $75,000 from Dmytro and Oksana Tomchuk, as well as the team will receive another $150,000 from Farmak after KPI is completed.
Bicovery is an ecosystem with web and mobile applications that helps a person with bipolar disorder, his relatives and doctors receive more complete information about the dynamics of the disease, warnings about potential manic or depressive episodes, measure the effectiveness of medications and procedures, reduce the cost and increase the consistency of treatment, aimed at improving the quality of life of the patient and his loved ones.
Using machine learning techniques and deterministic analysis, Bicovery monitors the mental and physical condition of a person with bipolar disorder in real time.
“Bicovery cuts the cost of treating a person with bipolar disorder by 10-30%, significantly reduces the number of visits to the doctor, reduces the need for outpatient treatment and speeds up the process of selecting effective drugs for a particular patient,” the report says.
ComeBack Mobility startup has developed smart attachments for crutches to control the load in the rehabilitation of diseases and injuries of the lower extremities.
By the end of 2020, domestic pharmaceutical manufacturers can maintain sales volumes of 2019 in monetary terms, said President of the Association of Manufacturers of Medications of Ukraine (AMMU) Petro Bahriy.
“The pharmaceutical industry doesn’t have deep minuses in its output, I think that in monetary terms we will reach the same volumes as in 2019, even with a slight plus,” he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
At the same time, Bahriy noted that significant changes have taken place within the portfolio of domestic pharmaceutical manufacturers, taking into account the fact that hospitals were closed for planned operations for a significant part of the year.”
“The assortment, which provides for planned operations, has decreased, but the anticovid group has grown and there is an increase,” he said.
At the same time, Bahriy called the great success of 2020 that domestic pharmaceutical companies have preserved and developed their exports.
He also stressed that if you take the American protocol for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19, then many of the products included in it are produced in Ukraine – and these drugs “work great.”
Investment of the pharmaceutical company Biopharma is $15-20 million, co-owner of the company Kostiantyn Yefymenko has said.
“We have already invested $125 million in production facilities. We continue to invest $15-20 million every year. And we have not yet begun to build a second plant, for example, in Egypt. When we build it, investments will be even bigger,” he said during a discussion panel at the Kyiv International Economic Forum.
Yefymenko said that “the decision to sell the plant to the pharmaceutical company STADA was strategic.”
“We have built two plants. One plant that produces generic drugs, hormones and probiotics, we brought to a turnover of EUR 40 million and sold it completely to STADA,” he said, adding that “STADA and not only STADA is watching and continues to look at not only Biopharma, but also other pharmaceutical companies.”
Yefymenko spoke about the negotiations between Biopharma and STADA. “I can’t say that it took much time for them to come. STADA bought the plant and we have a completely transparent fence with them, because we are on the same site. STADA and I have remained partners, since all the infrastructure that we built, we have with them 50×50. This is a transformer substation, gas hydraulic fracturing, water supply, sewage and fire protection system,” he said.
“STADA is considering the possibility of expanding its plant, we are considering expanding our plant,” Yefymenko said
Pharmacy sales in Ukraine in January-April 2018 in money terms grew by 41% compared to the same period in 2017, to UAH 30.14 billion. Sales in physical terms increased by 8% in the four months, to 543.575 million packs, the Business Credit company told Interfax-Ukraine. According to the company, in particular, retail sales of medicines in money terms increased by 44%, UAH 24.914 billion, sales in physical terms grew by 21%, to 374.345 million packs.
The weighted average price of goods in the so-caled “pharmacy basket” for the four months of 2018 was UAH 55.45 for the package, the average price of medicines was 66.55 UAH for the package.
In April 2018, pharmacy sales amounted to UAH 7.178 billion, which is 35% more than a year earlier, medicines sales increased by 38%, to UAH 5.938 billion.
