Dishman Pharma, a Rs 800 crore Ahmedabad based pharma giant, has signed a co-operation and joint API development agreement with Polpharma of Poland. Both companies feel that this partnership will benefit mutually and pave the way for a stronger growth in coming years.

Polpharma is a strong player in Poland market and a leader in the Central and Eastern European markets as well as CIS countries with turnover of US$ 400 million. The company is also CEE leader in the API sales with almost 90 per cent of which in regulated markets including USA.

J R Vyas, managing director, Dishman, said, "Dishman has now strategies to cooperate with leading API players and pharma companies such as Polpharma with their strength in R&D and API plants in India as CRAM player. Such partnerships will ensure long term API manufacturing contracts to Dishman and also provide API development and DMF preparation capabilities to partners to cut short their time to market."

Theo Iliopoulos, VP operations and general manager fine chemicals, Polpharma, said, "As the development and manufacturing model changes and the Regulatory requirements become ever stricter it is crucial for development and manufacturing to adjust and build partnerships and networks with other groups. It will allow us to come up with solutions to meet the market expectations and sustain the increased competition between major pharma and generic pharma and solve different problems".

"This is unprecedented power of doing things together. It is the future of the pharmaceutical industry. Looking for such partnerships with academic centres, service providers with innovative technologies and development laboratories of proven efficiency is the way forward for an industry facing fierce competition." he added.