LAUGFS Holdings Ltd and Premium International Pvt Ltd have formed a joint partnership to build and operate an Oral Solid Dosage (OSD) pharmaceutical manufacturing facility, which is expected to be the first internationally certified plant in Sri Lanka to export products to the world.
The LAUGFS manufacturing facility at Koggala is expected to transform the healthcare and pharmaceutical sector in the country on numerous fronts. Boosting the healthcare sector through technology transfer and capacity building, this will also deliver numerous benefits to the country’s economy as well as the local consumer.
“Being a home grown Sri Lankan conglomerate, we are proud to diversify further into the healthcare sector. With this new venture, we will be able to provide high quality, affordable pharmaceutical products for the local market, saving billions of foreign currency outflow. Compared to our neighbouring countries, Sri Lanka’s dependency on pharmaceutical imports is extremely high with only 10% of the requirement manufactured locally.Bangladesh, for example, where the domestic pharmaceutical market is thrice the value of our own, meets 97% of the domestic requirement through local manufacturing. Pakistan caters to around 70% of domestic demand of finished medicine through their local production,” stated Mr.W.K.H. Wegapitiya, the Chairman of LAUGFS.
“We see tremendous prospects in the export market, where there are lucrative opportunities for contract manufacturing. With our favourable patent protection regulations compared to some of our neighbouring countries, Sri Lanka is a more attractive destination to MNCs for contract manufacturing,” Mr.Wegaitiya further elaborated. “We already have plans to export to the UK, European Union as well as the African continent, and strongly believe this will become a significant contributor to our country’s export revenue.”
“Once commissioned, this state-of-the-art pharmaceutical complex will be the largest and most advanced such facility in Sri Lanka. We will have the capacity to manufacture complex formulations and molecules, which have never been produced in the country before,” stated Mr.Prasantha Kularatna, Managing Director and CEO of Premium International, which is a joint shareholder and the lead technical consultant of the project. “Designed and engineered by a consortium of global consultants and technical experts, the facility is expected to meet and comply with strict international industry standards including the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the EU’s Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) and World Health Organisation. All components and systems will be designed and commissioned according to superior international standards, including GEP, GAMP and ASME.”
The facility, which is expected to complete constructions in 16 months, will manufacture various types of tablets, capsules and dry powder suspensions both of the beta lactam(penicillin based) and non-beta lactam varieties. In addition, the non-beta lactam plant will also manufacture ointments, soft gels and suppositories. Along with generic products belonging to these two varieties, the facility will also produce many ‘high tech’ and ‘cutting-edge’ medications never before manufactured in Sri Lanka.
