Turkey's leading pharmaceutical company Abdi İbrahim is investing about TL 1B ($235.86 million) in three new production facilities.
It will open Turkey's largest biotechnological pharmaceuticals manufacturing facility AbdiBio today.
Located in Istanbul's Esenyurt district, the TL 400-million-facility covers an area of 13,000 square meters and has a production capacity of 11 million vials, 9 million syringes, 22 million cartridges and 1 million lyophilized materials.
The pharmaceutical giant will also lay the foundations of two new plants - a sterile injectable plant and an oncology production facility - worth TL 600 million.
Scheduled for production in 2020, the Sterile Injectable Manufacturing Plant will be the largest of its kind in Turkey, while the oncology production facility will also meet a significant need of the sector.
"We are increasing our investments because we believe in Turkish pharmaceutical sector's potential. We have contributed to the sector as well as to our country's strength and future," Chairman of Abdi İbrahim Nezih Barut said.
He underlined that biotechnology was at the center of a major change. Pointing to the pharmaceutical sector's transformation in and outside Turkey, Barut said biotechnological methods are becoming more and more effective in the development of new drugs. He suggested that AbdiBio reflects Abdi İbrahim's vision for transformation in the pharmaceutical sector. "This vision will increase our company's, as well as the Turkish pharmaceutical industry's competitive power. It will add value to the entire sector," he said. Barut said that according to consultant firm IQVIA, six of the top 10 pharmaceuticals are biotechnological, while that figure is nine in Turkey. He added that biotech drugs hold a 27 percent market share globally and 22 percent market share in Turkey.
"It is estimated that the biotechnological pharmaceuticals market will grow over substantially in the coming years. In such an environment, as Turkey's leading company in the field of biotech pharmaceuticals, we wanted to lead the way," Barut continued.
"AbdiBio marks Abdi Ibrahim's tenacity and objective in this field. The state-of-the-art TL 400-million-facility is Turkey's largest featuring biotechnological pharmaceuticals manufacturing facility," Barut said, adding that the facility will produce world-class medicine and carry out all the production processes in the product chain, starting from the cell bank to the final product. He noted that the other two facilities, which will be built with an investment of TL 600 million, will begin production in 2020.
He added that an investment process for ophthalmology in their manufacturing complex is almost completed. "Thanks to this investment worth TL 240 million, ophthalmology products - previously imported - will be produced in Turkey now," Barut said."Similarly, our hormone production area, which saw an investment of TL 18 million, will be operational this year. The total investment at our Esenyurt production complex has reached more than TL 2.5 billion. Together with our foreign investments, this figure exceeds TL 3 billion."
Abdi İbrahim chairman said that as a company with 100 percent domestic capital, they have led the way in terms of both turnover and the number of boxes for 16 years. He recalled that, apart from Turkey, they established the most modern facilities in Kazakhstan and Algeria. Explaining that they operate in 12 different countries and export their products to 50 countries, from the European Union countries to Canada and from North Africa to Asia, Barut said that they aim to boost exports by 32 percent in 2018.
