France’s pharma giant moves production to Turkey

ISTANBUL - Reuters

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France’s pharmaceutical company Servier has decided to move some of its production operations from France and Ireland to Turkey. The company will produce around 21 million medicine packages in the next 18 months. 

The company plans to increase its annual production capacity through Abdi İbrahim and İlko İlaç in Turkey to 32 million packages by 2018, said company management at a press meeting on April 1. 

“The production operations of 21 million packages of medicines will be moved to Turkey partly until the end of 2016. The operations will be moved to Turkey in the next 18 months. This figure is equal to some 97 percent of our current sales in Turkey now,” said Servier Turkey chief Philippe Mea. 

“In addition to this, we plan to produce an additional five million packages of medicines in our product group, which is to be licensed. By 2018, we will reach a total of 32 million packages of annual production capacity. We can increase this figure if we make exports to the neighboring region,” he noted. 

Servier Turkey plans to reach over 200 million Turkish Liras of revenue over this year, said Mea. The company had a number of local contractors producing around 6.23 million medicine pacakges annually until now. 

Servier sells cardiology, psychiatry, diabetes and oncology medicines in Turkey. 

With Servier transferring its production to Turkey through Turkey’s Abdi İbrahim and İlko İlaç, Mea said that İlko İlaç will make 11 million liras of investments. 

“Turkey’s health system is quite appealing. There are some grounds of challenge in the pricing strategy for us, but we need to balance these two elements,” he said. 


New subsidies on way

The Health Ministry Undersecretary Eyüp Gümüş said that they want to support the production activities more in Turkey in a bid to decrease the foreign trade deficit in the sector and to strengthen the sector’s infrastructure. 

“The Health Ministry has started a comprehensive program with the budget of 2.5 billion liras to support local pharma production…We especially want to lure biotechnological manufacturing into Turkey,” he noted. 

“We will offer long-term purchasing guarantees in some items, but we want foreign companies to co-produce with local firms. We will want them to launch production in Turkey or make local companies produce,” added Gümüş. 

According to data from the Pharma Industry Employers Union (İEİS), around 9.82 billion liras worth medicines were imported by Turkey in 2015 with a 15.8 percent of increase from the previous year. Turkey’s pharma sector’s volume is estimated at around 17 billion liras.