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| Sheetal Arora, Mankind Pharma's managing director |
India's Mankind Pharma earlier this year said it would invest $16 million in an API plant. Now it intends to invest another $30 million to add two more plants in India.
Sheetal Arora, Mankind's managing director, told the PTI news service that the company would invest Rs 200 crore, not including the cost of land, to build two plants by the middle of next year, the Economic Times reports.
Mankind Pharma, not to be confused with insulin maker Mannkind, plans to call for investing about Rs 50 crore in an API plant in Behror that it hopes to have open by mid-2016. It also is working on a facility in Sikkim that would make a number of products, Arora said. The drugmaker will invest about Rs 150 crore on that facility. Arora told the news service it is looking to add another facility in Udaipur by early 2018.
In April, the company said it expected to complete and API plant in Rajasthan by the end of this year.The company already has 16 plants making products that includes antibiotics, erectile dysfunction drugs, condoms, and over-the-counter products.
The expansion comes as India is looking for ways to make API production more affordable for drugmakers so that they can reduce their need to buy from China, which currently provides about 80% of the APIs used in Indian drugs. The government has said it will donate land for companies wanting to build API plants.
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