With the political deadlock between Iran and the West easing, Western drugmakers are sizing up the opportunities for new plants there. Meanwhile, an Iranian pharmaceutical company has agreed to build a pharma plant in Azerbaijan, its neighbor to the north.
Iran's Darou Pakhsh Pharma Chem has agreed to partner with Azerbaijan to invest $38.8 million (€35 million) on the first phase of pharma manufacturing facility, AzerNews reports. It will be built in Sumgayit, one of the largest cities in the country.
Darou Pakhsh Pharma Chem, which is owned by the Organization of Social Protection of the Islamic Republic, will export drugs to Azerbaijan as the plant is built and readied for production, which is expected to take 3 to 5 years, the publication said. "The way for investment has been paved and the project will be inaugurated soon," Rassoul Dinarvand, head of Iran's Food and Drug Administration (FDA), told the publication.
Iran's FDA last year completed a deal for Denmark-based Novo Nordisk ($NVO) to build a $78.1 million (€70 million) plant to produce its FlexPen prefilled devices in Iran. The project is expected to take 5 years to complete and when up and running will create 160 jobs. Novo has maintained operations in Iran and has about 130 people working there. India's Cipla in 2014 said that it had struck a deal with its Iranian distributor to jointly build a manufacturing facility in Iran.
Iran's Bayer Aflak, which has no connection to Germany's Bayer Healthcare, in 2014 opened a plant near the western city of Azna to produce veterinary meds but said it was working on a second phase to produce human drugs.
- read the AzerNews story