The company is also expected to firm up an agreement with the Pune-based Hindustan Antibiotics to take on lease five of the latter's reactors for manufacturing vitamin B2 and B12. "The agreement is expected to be firmed up over the next few weeks," official sources said. The total investment involved is pegged at Rs 15 crore.

RPG Life Sciences chairman HV Goenka told shareholders at the company's annual general meeting here on Friday that the company's plans for the manufacture of vitamin B2 and vitamin B12 continue to make progress. "We are hopeful to start commercial operations during the third quarter of this year," Mr Goenka said.

RPG Life Sciences has also chalked out plans to tap the $40 billion generics market for drugs scheduled to go off patent from 2002. This broadly involves a joint development effort with European generics company, Norton. "While two products have already been developed successfully, your company is engaged in development of two more products for the future," Mr Goenka added.

He also said that the company's focused decision to discontinue the low margin generics business in pharmaceuticals and bulk technical business in agrochemicals will continue during this year as well. Sources indicated that the search for a "like-minded" partner for the company's agrochemicals business continues, though this may take a little longer that initially anticipated.

Meanwhile, the company plans to launch nine brands in the current year. During the first three months of the year, the company has launched products like Zaxial (for osteoporosis), Zolpanz (for the treatment of ulcer), Glipixor-SR (for diabetes), Arpitor (for cholesterol reduction) and Arpimune-ME (a cyclosporin formulation used in pre and post organ transplant care).