Oyster Medisafe Limited, a newly set up Korean joint venture company, based at Hyderabad, is establishing a medical disposable manufacturing facility in an area of 10 acres at Dabilpur Village, Medchal Mandal in Andhra Pradesh with an investment of Rs 45 crore.

The company plans to manufacture several medical devices such as syringes, needles and auto-disable syringes and intends to apply for FDA approval for this facility. The Korean partner, Sukang Medica, which is in medical disposables business, will make equity participation. Sukang has a buy back arrangement through which it will source 40 per cent of the production at the facility. Oyster is backed by NRI doctors in the US.

KJ Park, managing director, Oyster Medisafe, told Pharmabiz, India is a right place to do business as it has potential to grow fast and it has a right mix of market and men. It has several advantages in manufacturing than many other countries. Investments in the healthcare industry should improve unlike in past, to utilise the full potential the country has.

Commenting on the Indian medical disposables sector, he added, Schedule M should further improve the quality of manufacturing. Government should ensure that no unqualified manufacturers enter the segment and its purchases are based on quality and not on low price medical disposable products. Government should also provide an environment where quality manufacturers are able to grow and compete with international companies, as Indian companies currently struggle with competing unorganised companies.

There has been a large difference in the growth achieved by the Indian pharma industry and medical devices industry. Manufacturing and marketing costs have restricted many new entrants into the sector. The segment has also been proved unfriendly to single-product manufacturing companies. Thus, only multi-product companies had been able to survive and trend may continue even in future, he opined.