China based Tofflon, one of the largest pharmaceutical freeze dryer manufacturers in the world is soon going to establish its subsidiary in India called Tofflon India. The company has already rented a place in Bangalore and has initiated the process to acquire business license. The company is hopeful that in six to seven months it will be able to launch its Indian subsidiary.
The newly rented 7000 square feet Bangalore office will basically act as a maintenance, production and customer service operation centre. The main function of this office would be to address the maintenance related issues for which the company would also be hiring Indian engineers.
Kathy Bao, International Business Division Director, Tofflon said, “India is a major market for us as Indian pharma companies have the distinction of having largest FDA approved facilities in the world and we want to tap this factor. Human contamination in clean room is a huge issue that can be addressed only with automation and isolation. We have been doing business with India from over eight years thus we understand the market in a better way and our products are designed specifically keeping these demands in mind.”
As of now, about 50 per cent of Tofflons international business is generated from India alone and the company has sold 80 products to different pharma companies in the country in the last eight years in India.
The decision to start the Indian subsidiary was announced during a one day seminar that Tofflon had organised with its Indian marketing and distributing partner Raj International on lyophilization in Ahmedabad. The seminar was on the latest lyophilization solutions for Indian aseptic processing of sterile drugs and was organised with an aim to ensure that India could leverage from the great opportunity of a booming global generics market with increasing contract manufacturing opportunities for MNCs and generics players.
The technical presentations at the seminar was made by Mike Stella, technical director of Tofflon. The seminar in Ahmedabad was the second one that the company had organised in the country for the pharma companies, the first one being organized in Hyderabad earlier this month.
“With this event our main focus was to sensitise about the need for automation and isolation to the industry and to inform them about our product offerings. We are really pleased with the response that we have received till now, as it was attended by many prominent companies who have shown their interest to be our prospective clients,” informed Jwalant Rana, CEO, Raj International.
He informed that two considerations at the front of current aseptic process thinking are automation and isolation. The logic of minimising aseptic risk of contamination through human handling by utilising, automatic loading and unloading of freeze dryers is incontrovertible. These process improvements will also increase sterility assurance levels in the sale of sterile API’s into regulated markets and protect personnel from health and safety risks. Running in parallel with cost saving and risk recuing improvements in capital equipment.
Bao stressed that for the development of the industry there needs to be more collaboration between India and China as both the countries are going through fast developmental changes with similar kind of challenges which can be addressed by working together.
She added, “The API sector is exploding in India, most of the API products are either being exported from India or China. Thus the focus is increasing on automation and isolation techniques as the western regulatory authorities need the companies to comply with these techniques. Through these seminars, our main aim was to educate the importance of automation and isolation and to show the technology that is available with us to the Indian companies.”
Apart from India which is the largest market for Tofflon outside China it also has a strong hold in Russia, US, Canada, East Asian market as well.