Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - October 2008 - (Page 33)

Dr Ünsal Hekiman, president and CEO of PharmaVision Explain the reasoning for PharmaVision staying solely a toll manufacturer. Our company strategy was to be only a toll manufacturer for multinationals and also for local companies. We don’t make our own registrations. The main reason for this is that we don’t want to be in competition with our customers. facilities and move production out of Turkey. Is this something PharmaVision is relying on for its future strategy? Of course it doesn’t make sense to invest in a site for volume alone; there must be long-term feasibility for such increases. For a lot of foreign companies coming to the growing Turkish pharmaceutical sector, toll manufacturing is an option. We are of course here for them when that happens, but we are not able to accept everything. Is that a business ethic or strategy? It is a business strategy and because of this we have had a big increase in our production volume, up more than 100% in the last five years. We have taken the company production from over 40 million packs per year to 100 million packs. make sure that you achieve a rationalisation for your product. As a toll manufacturing company we have to produce very economically. We have to invest for computer-aided automated production facilities. We have to decrease our costs and we have to increase our efficiencies. Our past is the assurance for the future. We have a production company with no recall in more than 15 years. Our aim is to produce quality not the product itself. We have a very strong quality assurance system. So you’re operating at full capacity? We are investing very heavily for increasing the capacity for feasible projects but we invest also for the stateof-the-art technology, which is very important since we are working for multinational companies and for the global market. What do you think about Turkey remaining a production hub for pharmaceuticals? I would say the pharmaceutical market in Turkey is a very fast grower. It is the main reason why many multinational companies are interested in Turkish pharmaceuticals and it is an advantage to produce in the market you operate in. Of course it is also possible to import products. But local production is growing, so as PharmaVision we have no concern finding customers. We have plans for new facilities outside of Istanbul. If the demand remains high, we may build a new facility in two years. One reason to invest outside Istanbul is that the land is getting more expensive and it doesn’t make sense to continue with production here. What kind of products are you producing and for whom? They are mostly the products we produced for Aventis for its original Hoechst Marion Roussel line. We also produce for UCB (Union Chimique Belge), Abbott, Roche, Pfizer and for Bayer. And we are starting to produce for Johnson & Johnson. How do you convince clients that you’re the right working partner? In the pharmaceutical sector there is only one standard: cGMP. You have to fulfil all these requirements; therefore I am not able to say we are better than the others. GMP is an important required standard, but in an investment you also have to With those plans in mind, what rate of growth are you expecting? Turkey’s local production is approximately 1.2 billion packs per year. We now The ongoing trend for international companies is to consolidate their 37 Last words Who said what in pharma’s last four weeks Does building a new production facility fit into your plans? 6 Calendar Upcoming events in Europe and around the world 3 News The monthly round-up of European stories 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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