The Mumbai - based pharmaceutical company, Arch Pharmalabs Ltd, is expanding its Solapur manufacturing facility with an investment of Rs 13-15 crore. The expanded facility is likely to be operational by June 2009.

The company's Solapur manufacturing facility is US FDA approved for manufacture of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). At present company is manufacturing 'pseudoephedrine', which is used for the preparation of cough syrups and other OTC products. The present capacity is 30 tonnes per annum.

Speaking to Pharmabiz, Ajit Kamath, chairman and managing director, said, "We are investing nearly Rs 15 crore for the capacity expansion. At present we are only manufacturing pseudoephedrine in our US FDA approved facility at Solapur. Currently, six more new products for the antiretroviral therapeutic segment are in pipeline at our R&D centre. We are expecting to commercialise a few new products by the end of December 2008. Besides, we are developing several new products for domestic and international markets. We will launch six new ARV drugs from the Solapur facility".

The company has nine manufacturing facilities and majority of them are acquired through inorganic way. Recently, it has inaugurated its Guragaon manufacturing facility. The company is undertaking manufacturing of APIs in the cardiovascular, immuno supressants, anti retrovirals (HIV) and anti malarials therapeutic segments.

The current manpower strength of the company is 1500 and another 100 will be added in a short time. The company has achieved better financial performance during last couple of years. It has clocked a turnover of Rs 360 crore during 2006-07. The turnover for the current year is likely to touch Rs 500 crore and it has projected a turnover of Rs 750 crore for the next year.

Talking about inorganic growth, Kamath, said, "We are aggressively looking at European market for acquisition and in another one year's time we may have our presence in the European market. At present we have presence in several overseas markets excluding Japan".