Pharmaceutical industrial zone near St. Petersburg
The pharmaceutical cluster is injected with pills
New residents will appear in the Pushkinskaya industrial zone
Anastasia Gordeeva, Kommersant, 10.02.2010
(published on the "Remedium" website)
Yesterday, the Moscow company "Biocad", engaged in the development and production of original and generic drugs for the treatment of urological, gynecological, oncological and neurological diseases, announced its intention to start production on the territory of the St. Petersburg pharmaceutical cluster in the Pushkinskaya industrial zone. Yesterday, the government of St. Petersburg allocated a site in this industrial zone to accommodate the Geropharm plant. It is planned to start the implementation of the Biocada project worth $15-20 million in 1.5 years, the first stage of the Geropharma enterprise worth €25 million will be commissioned in 2012. According to experts, despite the fact that the first two residents of the pharmaceutical cluster are Russian companies, Pushkinskaya will most likely be supplemented by foreign manufacturers in the near future.
At a meeting held yesterday in Smolny to discuss the concept of pharmaceutical cluster development, Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg Mikhail Oseevsky said that a new company, Moscow Biocad, may join the St. Petersburg pharmaceutical cluster in the near future. As Dmitry Morozov, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Biocad CJSC, explained, we are talking about the possible construction in St. Petersburg of a plant for the production of substances and dosage forms based on monoclonal antibodies (that is, in fact, a new direction for the company), as well as the production of existing drugs. According to Dmitry Morozov, the exact amount of investment in the project has not yet been determined, but the minimum costs will amount to $ 15-20 million, and it is planned to start construction within 1.5 years. Mr. Morozov also said that the construction within the cluster will allow the company to save up to 45% of the budget due to the fact that the city authorities promise to take over the creation of infrastructure. In addition, according to the head of "Biocada", the state will subsidize the refinancing rate on loans of residents of the pharmaceutical cluster.
According to the head of the Committee for Economic Development of Industrial Policy and Trade Yevgeny Elin, the cluster participants will also receive preferences on income and property taxes, however, detailed conditions will be known at the end of February, by the time the resolution on the development of the pharmaceutical cluster in St. Petersburg is adopted. KERPPiT states that the pharmaceutical cluster will be located in the Pushkinskaya industrial zone, the reserve area of the territory offered to investors is 12 hectares.
Yesterday, the government of St. Petersburg approved a resolution on the allocation of 2.7 hectares in the "Pushkin" St. Petersburg company "Geropharm". According to Peter Rodionov, CEO of Geropharm, investments in the project will amount to about €25 million, half will be financed from the company's own funds, half through bank loans. At the new production facility, Geropharm will produce both original drugs used in neurology, ophthalmology, already put on the market, and innovative drugs that the pharmaceutical company is currently developing, and generic drugs from among the vital and essential medicines (VED). The company will be able to produce up to 55 million vials of finished dosage forms per year. The commissioning of the first stage of the plant is planned in 2012.
According to Sergey Shulyak, CEO of DSM Group, almost all modern pharmaceutical plants built in Russia according to GMP standards were sold to Western companies because the owners could not find medicines in demand for production. "So far, Russia has the only modern plant whose investments are paying off – Evalar. Others, such as Bioton-Vostok, which passed into the hands of Sanofi-Aventis, Makiz-Pharma, acquired by the German Stada after the change of ownership, began to be used for the production of more well–known medicines," Mr. Shulyak believes. According to him, most likely, all 6 pharmaceutical clusters announced by different subjects of the federation are unlikely to find the required number of residents. David Melik-Huseynov, Head of Research at Pharmexpert, agrees with Mr. Shulyak. According to his forecasts, despite the mood of the St. Petersburg authorities to make it a priority to attract Russian manufacturers, the pharmaceutical cluster will not be limited to domestic companies, since there are still few large Russian pharmaceutical companies ready to make serious investments. Meanwhile, the international pharmaceutical concern Novartis has already announced its decision to consider the possibility of creating a pharmaceutical production in the Stavropol Territory, Nycomed – its intention to build a pharmaceutical plant in the Yaroslavl region, and the Danish Novo Nordisk – plans to build an insulin production plant in Russia.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru10.02.2010