Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - October 2008 - (Page 24)

Mustafa Birgi, chairman, The Birgi Group With three companies with three different disciplines within the group, how you maintain a coherent vision with a coherent set of priorities? All of our companies are part of the production circle. They go very well with each other and we have a lot of synergies, having everything done inhouse. Some pharmaceutical companies have started making their own ampoules. They make them in-house and they use their own ampoules and that’s it. We went into this the other way around. We were primarily a packaging manufacturer and then we started our own pharmaceutical manufacturing where we use part of our ampoules but not all of them. And we have to keep it that way. We have to be present on the market as a glass manufacturer, as an ampoule manufacturer as well as a pharmaceutical contract-manufacturer. Doing it all in-house goes very well technologically because there is a lot of give and take between the technical staff and there is quite a lot of synergy. It sounds like you structure your company based on the evolving needs of your customers and on what you feel you’re capable of doing? Yes, we have limited our lines to a niche sector — parenterals and primary packaging for parenterals. That is really dirty work in the sense that it is the most critical and most difficult work in pharmaceutical manufacturing: producing parenterals. It is not like making tablets or syrups. The new toll manufacturing facility has EU approval. Yes. Now with Mefar, our export business is something like 15% of our production. Certainly, we’d like that to be higher. Exports among Turkish pharmaceutical companies are very low compared to yours. Do you get the sense that European companies are not taking notice of the quality coming out of Turkey? Indeed, yes. It’s one of our major difficulties in making us accepted in western circles. We hear you have a new production facility for Mefar in Kurtköy. Yes, we have been producing since the beginning of this year but unfortunately moving over completely to that site is taking a very long time because in pharmaceutical manufacturing you can’t just shut down here and start working there. We bought some new lines for the new facility. They are going into production now and we will be closing down one line by one line in the old facility. That will take us until the end of next year. Any insight on how they can overcome those perceptions? By just trying to prove themselves. Turkey, but we told ourselves that if we didn’t become international, then we wouldn’t have international competition and we wouldn’t have international quality. Our name is well known in the western world. But you’ve been accepted in western circles. What have you done? We started exporting in 1969. We made it a point very early on when we said: “We are going to export our products.” We were earning a lot of money in Do you wish more companies had this sort of thinking in the pharmaceutical industry? Of course. And I believe that the local Turkish pharmaceutical industry has lost 37 Last words Who said what in pharma’s last four weeks 3 News The monthly round-up of European stories 6 Calendar Upcoming events in Europe and around the world 7 BioFutures Gerhard Symons on the dark side of Russian healthcare

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - October 2008

Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - October 2008 Contents News and Analysis Calendar BioFutures Strategy Fundamentals Executive Recruitment: Small Company, Big Career Executive Recruitment: Instant Pharma Named Patient Programmes Executive Review: Turkey

Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - October 2008

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