Nuray Chemicals Pvt Ltd, the API wing of the emerging conglomerate of diverse range of pharmaceutical manufacturing and marketing companies in Chennai, has taken over the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved plant of Actavis Pharma (Watson Group) located in Tamil Nadu, according to J Jayaseelan, the managing director of the group of companies.

The Swiss firm Actavis was acquired by the US based Watson Pharmaceuticals in 2012. The total investment for the acquisition of the Indian facility is Rs.30 crore, he said.

Nuray Chemicals, the supplier and manufacturer of active pharmaceutical ingredients, owns a manufacturing plant and a research & development facility in Tiruvallur near Chennai.

While speaking to Pharmabiz, Jayaseelan said the facility is WHO GMP compliant and approved by US FDA four times. It also received approval from the European Medicine Agency (EMA) two years ago, and is EHS :ISO 14001:2004 compliant and OHSAS 18001:2007 compliant. The facility is also having a separate block for handling oncology products.

“We are having products with US DMF. This acquisition has further strengthened our Nuray Chemicals to handle any kind of market requirement for API. The current plant of Nuray is situated in Tiruvallur,” Jayaseelan added.

Apart form Nuray, the pharma firms owned and controlled by Jayaseelan include Delvin Formulations Pvt Ltd for domestic marketing, Ethics Bio Lab for bio equivalence studies, Saimirra Innopharm for manufacturing formulations for semi regulated markets and Numen Healthcare for marketing formulations in semi regulated markets. Out of these, Ethics Bio Lab and the recently acquired Nuray Chemicals have US FDA approvals.

One of the co-promoters of the company is Muthusamy Swaminathan from US. These two promoters had owned and managed the generic drug maker, Edict Pharmaceuticals till 2011 and sold their shares in the company to US based PAR Pharmaceuticals for a value of around US$ 37.6 million. The amount they invested in Delvin Formulations.

Edict was a 100 per cent export oriented unit engaged in product development and manufacturing of generic formulations for the USA and other regulated markets. The company was founded and promoted by Jayaseelan in association with another promoter Muthusamy Shanmugham (USA), in the year 2009.

Jayseelan is the secretary of the IPA Tamil Nadu unit and the vice-chairman of the Indian Drug Manufacturers Association (IDMA).