Kemwell Pvt Ltd, is investing Rs 50 crore to set up two facilities at Nelamangala in the outskirts of Bangalore. The funds are being raised for the projects through internal accruals with a small debt component. While one facility is a liquids production unit, the other is an advanced laboratory for pharmaceutical development services.

The blue print of the Greenfield project is underway. The construction will begin within four months and will be commissioned in 18 months. The liquid manufacture unit will be a state-of-the-art facility with a capacity of 240 million bottles. The contract manufacture services will be offered to both domestic and international customers.

Going by the positive feedback from its customers, Kemwell is gearing up to focus on pharmaceutical development services. It offers its expertise to the global and Indian companies in the areas of formulation development, process technology, analytical development, dossiers submissions, stability studies and scale up among. The lab will span over an area of 20,000 sq ft and will have 100 scientists will be ready by the year-end. The company's recent strategic pact with Patheon, a global provider of drug development and manufacturing services will help bolster its research offering.

The production plant and the research offering will help us to be a one-stop shop for product development and manufacture, Anurag Bagaria, vice president, business development, Kemwell told Pharmabiz.

The existing EMEA certified oral facility of 5 billion capacity manufactures uncoated, sugar-coated, film-coated tablets, effervescent tablets and capsules with batch sizes ranging from 5 kg to 1000 kg.

Compared to India, manufacturing plants in the West especially US are massive, but the recessionary phase has seen global pharma majors being forced to address the cost issue and this is where India can offer economies-of-scale and the expertise in formulation production, stated Bagaria.

Moreover, Indian companies in contract manufacture have been able to adhere to the timelines, offer the highest expertise in terms of technical capability and quality standards. This makes the international pharma giants confident to offload production to India, he added.

The 20-year old formulation contract manufacture major handles six of the top 10 top multinational pharma giants including AstraZeneca, Bayer, GSK, J&J, Novartis, manufacturing five of the top 10 brands in India. From facilities in India and Sweden, Kemwell manufactures tablets, capsules, liquid orals, external drops, ointments, gels and creams. Since it has deferred any intention to deal with its own range of branded products, this prevents every conflict of interests with its customers.

In order to strengthen its infrastructure, Kemwell is scouting for possible takeovers of small and medium sized units in South America, US and Europe besides India.