Elder Pharmaceuticals has received accreditation from Ministry of Health-Japan for its Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) plant at Patalganga, Maharashtra, opening up the fast-growing Japanese markets for the companies products. This accreditation is considered to be very difficult to get as only companies with the very best of infrastructure and quality are able to get this accreditation.

Alok Saxena, director of Elder said, “Elder is positioning itself to be an API and advanced intermediate supplier to the Japanese market. This accreditation for the API plant is a step towards strengthening Elder’s position as a supplier of APIs and intermediates in the Japanese market., The company has also developed two products going off patent in the Japanese market in 2014. One of the products is from the CNS category and the second is from the GI segment.”

Elder has already filed a PCT patent (an international patent application) for one of the advanced intermediates for the Japanese market and is in talks with Japanese generic companies for supply contracts.

The pharmaceutical market in Japan, valued at $69.4 billion in 2009 is the second largest pharma market in the world. Key growth drivers for branded pharma include the growing use of chronic high-value innovative treatments driven by an increasingly elderly population, the high proportion of the healthcare budget spent on pharmaceuticals compared to other developed pharmaceutical markets, and the low level of generic penetration. Japan is increasing the share of its healthcare spend on generics pharma and it is targeting this share to go up to 30 per cent of its total market by 2013.