The Financial Express - May 23, 2007
Bangalore

Marck Biosciences Limited, leading manufacturers of parenterals, announced its foray into southern India market by launching a comprehensive range of its products in Karnataka.

"Southern India accounts for almost 28% of India's Rs 1600 crore parenterals market. Marck is tagetting revenues of Rs 25 crore and a market share of eight per­cent in the southern India market," Bhavesh Patel, managing director, Marck told reporters here on Tuesday.

Marck targets to become the third largest parenteral manufacturer in India by investing Rs 72 crore at Marck's existing plant at Kheda in Gujarat. With the new in-vestment, the total investment at Kheda would exceed Rs 125 crore.

The investment is aimed at enhancing the plant's production capacity from 65 million units to 230 million units for small volume parenterals and from 29 million per units to 61 million units of Large Volume Parenterals.

"The launch in southern India is in keeping with its plan to cross the target turnover of Rs 100 crore in
2007-08," said Patel adding the company already had a strong presence in western and northern India.

Globally, the company has a presence across 40 countries, including several parts of Africa, in parts of CIS and Asia.

It also has a reach in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Brazil. The company had not so far made its foray into southern In-dia due to constraints in production capac-ity, but with the planned expansion, the southern market could be catered to.

The company will roll out is products across Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Keralabyendof2007.

Speaking about the company's expan-sion plans. Patel said that Marck has target-ted i growth of 150% in FY07-08. It hopes to augment its current turnover from Rs 40 crore to Rs l00 crore at the end of FY07-08. The current market size of sterile dosage in southern region is Rs 450 crore, he said adding its product line in the cate­gory included included common solu­tions, irrigation solutions, anti fungals, antibiotics, diuretics, electrolytes, oph-thalmics, diluents and respiratory solu-tions.

In both LVP and SVP it directly sells products in domestic and international I markets and contract manufacturing for 48 of India's pharma companies and some major International pharmas. Its customer base includes Dr Reddy's Glenmark, Ranbdy, Cadila and Zydus.

The company plans to have a network of 80-100 distributors in southern India to expand its reach, he added.