$85m Plant Demonstrates Russia's Commitment to Pharma 2020, says NovaMedica

Print 29 July 2013
Dan Stanton, In-Pharma Technologist.com

NovaMedica and the Russian Government are to build an $85m (€64m) facility as part of a joint venture encouraging local manufacturing, the company says.

Russia’s Pharma 2020 strategy is implicit in its target of manufacturing at least 50% of its medicines on home soil by the end of the decade and the impending 50,000m2 GMP facility in the Grabtsevo technopark, Kaluga, will support such legislation, producing NovaMedica’s products for the domestic market.

This is a specific example of the Pharma 2020 initiative at work, NovaMedica spokesperson Elena Pochesneva told inPharmatechnologist.com. Furthermore, she continued, “last week it was announced that construction of 2 new pharmaceutical plants have been started in different regions of Russia simultaneously” in parallel with NovaMedica’s facility.

Along with aid from RUSNANO - a Russian government-owned investment company – the plant will be built under a joint venture with DRI Holdings Limited, part of US portfolio firm Domain Associates, and will manufacture a range of medicines and medical devices currently “demanded and not present in Russia,” Pochesneva said.

The companies are involved with sourcing pipeline products to build NovaMedica’s portfolio. So far, deals with US-based firms Regado Biosciences, Marinus Pharma, and Lithera, plus New Zealand-headquartered CoDa Therapeutics, have resulted in four products in the pipeline, though more are planned.

“Negotiations are almost rounded off with several [other] companies,” Pochesneva continued, which will add a “number of finished innovative therapeutics area-specific pipeline products that are a complete fit with NovaMedica’s technological concept.”

International Access

The international presence in the joint venture, and the sourcing of foreign medicines to be made at Kaluga demonstrate one of the ways non-Russian companies can benefit from Russia’s protectionist policies.

Another way for multinationals to penetrate a market expected to reach $35bn by 2020 is by building facilities on Russian land. This was the response of a number of Big Pharma following the announcement of the Russian strategy, including AstraZeneca who built a $150m facility - also in the Kaluga region – in 2011.

Such tactics are still ongoing, according to Pochesneva, who told us “two big international pharmaceutical companies - Novo Nordisk and Berlin-Chemie/Menarini - are in the process of building their production facilities in the same regional cluster.

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