Sartorius India, the pharma-biotech engineering major has bagged major orders from the Asian region, which may add up to additional business revenues to the tune of Rs.50 crore by the year-end.

Sartorius has grabbed contracts from companies in Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and China. In Korea, Sartorius will now set up a microbial and cell culture facility, which is 100 per cent executed out of India by its team of bio-engineers. In China, the company is engaged in design and development of two totally indigenised largest cross flow filtration systems worth Euro 50 million. The systems are used for human albumen fractionation.

In the domestic market, the company will set up two core plants for Biological Evans in Hyderabad and Ventri-Biologicals in Pune for their animal vaccine development programme.

The company is bolstering its bio-engineering project efforts with a Rs 50 crore investment for setting up an advanced dedicated facility to cater to global requirements in biotechnology engineering. The plant is slated to come up on the Tumkur Road, Bangalore by the end of 2004 or early 2005. It would increase the production capacity by four times from the current Euro 10 million to Euro 50 million. The generation of funds for this investment is self-generated.

Last year, the company relocated its international service centre from Germany to India following orders from its parent company Sartorius Group which views India as a potential business hub because of the availability of qualified technical manpower at competitive cost. The company is also expected to schedule its much-awaited new testing facility next month at an investment cost of Rs. 1 crore for validation of sterility testing for the first time in the country at a manufacturing site.

Going hand in hand with the new projects, Sartorius India has chalked out plans to increase its staff to 400 from the current 220, mostly technical and skilled manpower.
Ending December 2003, the turnover of the company from its two divisions, Engineering and Mechatronics, was Rs. 100 crore and it registered a growth rate of 35 per cent. "Our earnings will rise Rs. 150 crore in 2004 end," Dr. Anil Paul Kariath, chief operating officer, Sartorius India, told Pharmabiz.com

While the biotechnology engineering market is valued at Rs 200 crore in the country, Sartorius share is 40 per cent in the areas of fermentation and downstream process business. Sartorius' competitors are Alfa Laval and players in the unorganised sector.

The factors attributed to the perceptible boom in the bio-engineering sector is a drastic shift in the fermentation technology segment. "The trend today is that production of conventional antibiotics is replaced by cheaper drugs manufactured mainly because energy costs have been the biggest deterrent factor for pharma companies which have opted for economical costs and faster revenue earnings. Pharmaceutical companies are keen to invest in high value and low volume products like vaccines, bio pharmaceuticals and bio-generics which have given a fillip to Sartorius's growth," pointed out Dr. Kariath.