Dive Brief:
- Bayer last week announced the opening of its second-largest OTC drug manufacturing facility in the Asia-Pacific region. Located in Yunnan, China, the plant will produce OTC meds along with traditional Chinese medicines (TCM).
- The site was acquired by Bayer when it bought the Chinese pharmaceutical company Dihon in 2014.
- Bayer expects to have invested 1.4 billion yuan, or about $210 million, in the site by 2020.
Dive Insight:
Bayer has been investing in its manufacturing base in China. The German pharma giant has around 13,000 employees in China, along with several manufacturing and R&D facilities. It hopes to gain from China's burgeoning pharmaceutical market, which was expected to reach $63 billion in sales last year.
"[The facility] will boost our manufacturing capacity for TCM products by a factor of three in 2016, and will also triple the manufacturing and supplying capacity for all Dihon products by 2020," said Lance Yuen, Bayer Head of Greater China, in a statement.
The facility's initial production line for traditional Chinese medicines earned a good manufacturing practices (GMP) certification.
Recently, China has come under scrutiny for the quality of its drug manufacturing. The FDA has sent a number of warning letters to Chinese facilities manufacturing drugs for US markets, most recently to Zhejiang Hisun Pharmaceutical.