Merck to set up bio-production unit in India
German healthcare and life sciences firm Merck KGaA is likely to set up a bioproduction plant in India to help local companies create bio-tech drugs and bio-similars (copies of off-patent bio-tech drugs). The plant will be its fourth such globally, a top executive for the company told Mint.
“We would be open to set up a bio-production centre. We have one in France and we have opened one in the US. We will open another one in China. Because we believe that demand in these three geographies is undisputed; as it is in India,” Udit Batra, member of the executive board of Merck KGaA and chief executive of its life science business which contributes 44% of the firm’s global revenue, said in an interview on Friday.
“We will talk to some government officials. We would want to make sure that we have some local customers who would like to use this facility and we want to make sure that regulations are standardised,” Batra said.
“I think this is where the discussion needs to happen in a very open way and the government will have to assure us that the regulatory standards will apply to every one.”
Investments for such plants are not huge, around $40 million, Batra said; but the plant will provide a critical infrastructure to small bio-tech and bio-similar firms in India who want to develop a process for a new bio-similar. The benefits for Merck Life science would also be significant, Batra said.
If the company does open the centre, it would replicate the centres that already exist in Martillac in France and two additional ones that Merck has recently announced in Shanghai and Greater Boston.
Merck Life science has a Merck Lab in India and has production facilities in Goa and Bengaluru.